Slashdot Mirror
Police Lose National High-Tech Crime Unit Website
Barence writes "The UK police have embarrassingly lost control of the National High-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) website. PC Pro reports the police have sloppily let the domain registration lapse, and it has now been picked up by an opportunistic German owner. The NHTCU was disbanded two years ago, but sites such as the BBC were still linking to the website as recently as July, making it a prime target for malware writers or phishing attacks."
SOCA remains entirely unrepentant for the lapse. "SOCA is aware that registration of the domain www.nhtcu.org has lapsed and is taking the necessary steps to remind partners and stakeholders that the NHTCU became SOCA e-crime in April 2006
I guess admitting that they goofed by letting the domain accidentally lapse would be too much. Instead they have to pretend like the domain is worthless since they changed their name two years ago.
With that reasoning, I guess AT&T can just let "cingular.com" lapse even though I still type that in every time I go to pay my AT&T wireless bill.
I'm a big tall mofo.
If you are a business, it pays to keep control of names and phone numbers for 5 years after you stop using them.
In the case of web sites, a few months with a nice "this web site has changed" message followed by a few months of an automated redirect, followed by several years of no DNS entry.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why exactly is this their responsibility? It's not their fault that other Web sites are linking to a now-defunct organization. Do they have to keep and maintain the domain forever just because a bunch of other people might not revise their links?