"SingTel Mobile" out of porn business - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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"SingTel Mobile" out of porn business

By Nawaz Marican, Special to ZDNet
November 14, 2001
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/-SingTel-Mobile-out-of-porn-business/0,139023166,120261833,00.htm

Those who have been using a "SingTel Mobile" site to access pornography for the last few months will get a new view when they next visit the site.

That is because locally-based Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (SingTel) has managed to recover the "SingTel Mobile" Web site, which used to redirect surfers to a multimedia-enabled pornography site.

SingTel Mobile is the cellular subsidiary of the formerly state-owned SingTel.

In July, CNETAsia discovered a Web site bearing SingTel Mobile name, which was redirected to a porn site. The universal resource locator (URL) of the site in question was www.singtel-mobile.com.

A check with domain name registration service provider Register.com at that time revealed that the site was not registered to SingTel. No names were provided, apart from an Armenian address and an Idaho, US telephone number.

According to Register.com, the domain was up for sale, although it was registered on July 1, 2001 and expires on July 1, 2002. The telephone number provided led to an automated voice message.

Today, a SingTel spokesperson told CNETAsia that the company is glad that it has managed to get back the URL.

He said "no money was paid" for the transfer of the disputed domain name.

According to him, SingTel acquired the site through Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which asked the pornography publisher to return the domain name after finding the latter to have been cyber-squatting.

ICANN is a non-profit international body that coordinates the technical management of the Internet's domain name and root server systems, as well as the allocation of IP addresses.

The site, which once may have caused some identity crisis to SingTel, now redirects users to SingTel homepage.