BBC Finds Scottish Council Site Linked to Illegal Casinos

BBC Scotland discovered that 16 links on the Scottish Borders regional council's website directed visitors to pages promoting illegal online casinos, including a link to Indonesian operator Joyslot88, according to the outlet's report. The council removed the links following the outlet's inquiry but declined to comment on the situation.

According to BBC Scotland, fifteen of the domains involved originally belonged to local nonprofit organizations hosted on a regional web service called Online Borders. The Scottish Borders council shut down Online Borders eight years ago, after which the project's domains lapsed and were acquired by new owners, who subsequently used them to host collections of links to unnamed iGaming operators.

The findings echo similar cases involving other UK local government websites, where outdated links to expired domains have been repurposed by third parties to redirect traffic toward unregulated gambling platforms. The council's decision not to comment on the matter leaves unanswered questions about how long the links remained active before being flagged and what measures, if any, will be implemented to prevent similar issues involving other legacy web projects tied to the local authority.