Police Lose National High-Tech Crime Unit Website 93
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."
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:5, Informative)
Why should you have to keep your links 'up to date'? They chose the domain name and the web address; nobody forced them to pick the one they did. It's the webmaster's responsibility to pick addresses that others can rely on. See Cool URIs don't change [w3.org].
After all, what makes more sense: a single webmaster maintaining a logical address which you can always use to get the right information, or thousands of websites all over the net scrambling to 'update' their links at exactly the right moment?
Re:Why does everything need its own domain name? (Score:3, Informative)
The organisation that took over the NHTCU, the Serious Organised Crimes Agency, has a .gov.uk: http://www.soca.gov.uk/ [soca.gov.uk]
I think we're used to seeing .gov.uk domains in the UK -- especially from local government. I don't think it's a problem.
Re:Can't admit a mistake? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh a domain name costs more then that. You may pay $10.00 a year for it. But for a company to keep track of it. Deal with customers who call ATT looking for Cingular and not willing to accecpt Cingular was bought out. Having keeping records of its expiration and renew it at the right time. Having to keep it uptodate with new links recreate configurations for that name when servers change...
It could cost a total of $50.00 - $1,000 a year for the domain name.
Just like the $900 toilet seat from the government. It wasn't the cost of the device but the red tape it took to get it approved and logged correctly.