Porn Spamming Leads to Shutdown of School Website

Links pointed users to porn, impotence drugs, online casinos.

LONDON - Sandown High School closed its website after links to hardcore pornography and impotence drugs were found in the parents' forum.

"We have taken [the site] off for the moment because we do not want people to think these are the sorts of things we condone," said Cath Scallon, the school's deputy headteacher.

The open parents' forum also contained links to online casinos and indecent images of singer Britney Spears. Spamming was to blame, Scallon said.

"We did discuss whether to have [the forum] password-protected, but we decided to leave it open so prospective parents could look at it," she said. "It's a shame [that it had to be shut down] because it was a positive thing with lots of interesting threads, such as about school instruments and the school uniform. But it appears that these links were added through Internet spam, and if you do not check a site every 10 seconds, this is what can happen."

Sandown High School is located on the Isle of Wight off the mainland's south coast.