X-rated shock for school website visitors

SHOCKED visitors to an Oldham school’s website have been redirected to a swingers’ page featuring explicit images.

Hathershaw College of Technology and Sport has been aware of the problem for some time and has held an investigation.

But it says the fault lies with the search engine Google and not its website.

The pornographic site occasionally appears when people log on to the Bellfield Avenue school’s website or are navigating between pages. It does not happen every time

It is the latest incident to hit the school whose website was copied by a prankster, plastered with porn and posted online in 2004.

Then in 2006 a hacker replaced its recorded telephone message with an X-rated version

Councillor Kay Knox, cabinet member for children, young people and families, said: “We have been aware of this issue for some time and it was immediately investigated by Hathershaw’s IT staff.

“We are doing everything that we can but have learned that this anomaly is actually a problem related to the Google search engine, not to the school’s own server or website.

“This unwelcome issue only arises if a visitor has come to the website via a Google search. It does not happen if, for example, you visit the site via a search done on Yahoo, or if you type the website address directly into your browser.

“Many other Internet sites suffer from the same issue but the matter cannot be resolved until it has been addressed by Google themselves.”