Scottish council website carried links to offshore casino sites

People looking for information about community councils in the Scottish Borders have instead been directed to online gambling portals.

Scottish Borders Council's website has a directory listing all 69 community councils across the region, including links to their social media pages, email contacts and websites.

But BBC Scotland News has found that 16 of those links were instead directing users to pages displaying offshore casino websites, which bypass strict UK gambling laws.

The local authority removed the links when alerted to the situation by the BBC, but did not respond to a request for comment.

Cyber security expert Dr Daniel Thomas, of the University of Strathclyde, said the incident was an example of "domain squatting".

Organisations deploy bots to buy expired domain names linked to reputable websites, or have desirable domains like .org or .org.uk.

It is not illegal to buy expired domain names.

Thomas said the community council websites would be attractive as links to their URLs appeared on the Scottish Borders Council website.

"When someone is looking for the community council and are met with this gambling portal they will think something is wrong and of course not engage with the site," he said.

"But when someone is searching for these sites, the now re-directed community council site will be at the top of list, as it appears a local group is giving out suggestions on the best offshore gambling sites to use."

The offshore gambling platforms operate outside British jurisdiction so they do not participate in the UK's national self-exclusion scheme, Gamstop.

Introduced to help problem gamblers kick the habit, it allows individuals who have actively banned themselves from gambling on websites and apps to continue playing.

"No Gamstop" casinos also bypass strict UK consumer laws by accepting credit card payments, a practice banned by the UK Gambling Commission since 2020 to prevent players from gambling with borrowed money.

Fifteen of the 16 affected community council websites were built and operated on a former third sector website directory called Online Borders.

Sources within the community councils told the BBC that when this platform became unresponsive eight years ago, Scottish Borders Council moved to shut it down and instructed that they would have to build their own sites.

Now all links related to Online Borders funnel users to the same portal, showing the "top noGamstop casinos".

The links remained on the Scottish Borders Council website until officials were alerted to the issue by the BBC earlier this month.

Chirnside Community Council was the only one of the 16 affected sites identified by the BBC which was not hosted by the Online Borders platform.

Instead the link to Chirnside Community Council took users to an Indonesian site called Joyslot88.

Thomas said: "Organisations tend to target small community groups like these councils as they are mainly ran by older people who don't have much tech knowledge.

"Councils like these change members quite regularly as well and sometimes things can get forgotten in the shuffle, domain leases can be one of them. That's what these organisations prey on."

The community councils affected were:

• Berwickshire: Chirnside; Duns; Gordon & Westruther; Hutton & Paxton
• Cheviot: Ancrum; Crailing, Eckford & Nisbet; Heiton & Roxburgh; Lanton; Oxnam Water; Sprouston
• Eildon: Bowden; Newton & Eildon
• Teviot & Liddlesdale: Hobkirk; Southdean; Upper Liddesdale & Hermita
• Tweeddale: Carlops

It is understood that, following BBC News's approach to Scottish Borders Council, it issued a memo asking community councils to ensure their websites were up to date.

Scottish Borders Council has not responded to requests for a comment.

BBC Scotland News has been unable to contact the operators of the gambling websites.