Civic body website becomes gateway to matrimony sites

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s official website may have been hacked. Citizens who have recently clicked on the Swachh Bharat link on the official website, were shocked to find that they were redirected to matrimonial and e-commerce websites instead.

The civic body in order to promote the cleanliness initiative had included the Central government’s link on the official website. Interestingly, the corporation which has been active on the Swachh Survekshan measure is clueless about the issue.

Surprisingly, this is not the first time such errors have been found on the website.

In April this year, some miscreants allegedly hacked the property tax data base and sent text messages to taxpayers to clear their property tax dues even after citizens had cleared them.

In April 2016, hackers posted nude images of Bollywood actress Sunny Leone on the website.

However, as of now if citizens click on the Swachh Bharat link they are redirected to Swachhbharaturban.in website on a new page where Bharat Matrimony, Bharat Matrimonial, Bharat Matrimonials and Bharat Matrimony Gujarati hyperlinks were found. When asked about the same subject, a senior GHMC official told this newspaper that the Centre probably changed its domain name from www.swachhbharaturban.in to swachhbharatmission.gov.in.

The official said that the corporation had nothing do with the domain and the Centre was responsible for it.