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Residents seeking information about community councils within the Scottish Borders have encountered unexpected redirects to online gambling sites instead of official resources. On the Scottish Borders Council’s website, a comprehensive directory is provided, listing all 69 community councils in the area along with links to their social media accounts, email addresses, and official websites. However, an investigation by BBC Scotland News revealed that 16 of these links were rerouting users to offshore casino websites, which operate outside the restrictions imposed by UK gambling regulations.
Following this discovery, the local council promptly removed the problematic links once the BBC brought the issue to their attention. Despite this action, the council chose not to comment further when approached for a statement about the incident. The situation highlights a cybersecurity vulnerability linked to the practice known as “domain squatting,” explained by Dr. Daniel Thomas, a cybersecurity expert from the University of Strathclyde.
Dr. Thomas elaborated that domain squatting involves entities using automated bots to acquire expired domain names connected to reputable organizations or valuable domains such as .org and .org.uk extensions. While legally permissible to purchase these expired domains, this practice can lead to misleading and potentially harmful outcomes. In this case, community council domains became targets since their URLs featured prominently on the official council website, thus attracting significant traffic.
The expert pointed out the damaging consequences of such redirects: “When someone is looking for the community council and are met with this gambling portal they will think something is wrong and of course not engage with the site,” he said. Furthermore, he added that the re-directed URLs could mislead users, making it appear as if local groups are endorsing offshore gambling platforms. This misleading appearance can place these gambling sites at the top of search results when individuals attempt to find legitimate community council websites, thereby undermining trust and access to accurate local information
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
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