County staff officials have addressed the San Benito County Free Library’s issue that involved the old website redirecting visitors to a site showing pornography.
Last December, library officials created a new web address—SBCFL.org—after a third party claimed the old domain and used it to show porn. Library staff previously attributed the issue to a glitch and couldn’t explain what caused the loss of ownership.
The issue regarding the old library web address was related to renewal fees for the domain name, according to county staff. After the library failed to renew the domain name, it lost the old web address to the other entity.
County staff informed the Free Lance that the fee for renewing the previous domain name was being charged to the personal credit card of someone on staff.
The county’s policy has been changed to allow these types of charges to be made only on a county credit card managed by the County Administrator’s Office. Staff said this effectively prevents third parties from purchasing county domain names and/or addresses in the future.
In addition, staff said the information technology department has taken steps to scrub the links associated with the old domain name and web address from the general county website, as have all library partners.
