Why are top university websites serving porn? It comes down to shoddy housekeeping.
Summary
Some top university websites have been exploited by scammers who used old and unmonitored internet settings to host porn and scam pages. This problem happens because university staff do not properly update or remove web addresses that are no longer in use.Key Facts
- University websites like Berkeley, Columbia, and Washington University had subdomains showing porn and scam content.
- Scammers took over these old, unused web addresses linked to the universities.
- The issue happens because the DNS records (which connect web names to servers) are not cleaned up after subdomains are deactivated.
- Universities often have many subdomains created by different groups and lack a central system to manage or remove them.
- Searching for terms like “porn” on these university websites reveals many hijacked pages.
- Only a few universities have fixed these problems after they were exposed.
- Even after cleanup, Google search results can still show the bad links unless the URLs are removed from the index.
- Experts recommend that any organization keep a detailed list of all subdomains and regularly check which ones are active to prevent such hijacking.
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