Porn

A British school closed its website after links to hardcore pornography and impotence drugs were discovered on the parents' forum.

Other links guided parents towards online casinos and indecent images of US singer Britney Spears.

Cath Scallon, the deputy headteacher at Sandown High School on the Isle of Wight, off the mainland's south coast, said spam rather than parents or pupils appeared to be to blame.

"It was the parents' forum which was affected. We did discuss whether to have it password-protected but we decided to leave it open so prospective parents could look at it," she said.

"It's a shame because it was a positive thing with lots of interesting threads such as about school instruments and the school uniform.

"But it appears that these links were added through Internet spam and if you do not check a site every 10 seconds this is what can happen.

"We have taken it off for the moment because we do not want people to think these are the sorts of things we condone."