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Russian iTunes Store infiltrated by .xxx banners after snafu [NSFW]

Kevin Murphy, December 5, 2012, 18:39:34 (UTC), Domain Registries

Russian iTunes users reportedly got a shock today when they discovered masses of sexually explicit content from the .xxx gTLD in their iTunes Store.
According to local reports, attempts to visit a part of the store dedicated to foreign movies displayed a bunch of banner ads for .xxx web sites instead of the expected content.


Digging a little deeper, it appears that the images were being drawn directly from xxx.xxx, a promotional directory site owned and managed by ICM Registry, the .xxx registry.
Speculation in the Apple blogs is that an iTunes Store developer inadvertently typed “xxx.xxx” somewhere as a placeholder URL, not realizing that .xxx is actually a live TLD.
There’s a lesson here for new gTLD registries somewhere, I’m sure.


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Comments (4)

  1. Really? Where do you work?

  2. Andrew says:

    A lesson for registry operators? Sure, that’s that they can get free advertising if a programmer messes up.
    I think the lesson is for programmers, if the theory holds up.

  3. Acro says:

    It’s the Millennium Bug, only better! 😀

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