The website for the city of Villa Hills, Kentucky, currently features a picture of 19-year-old Tina clutching her bare breasts.
Images of "Euro Teen Sluts" appear where Manchester, Iowa's city government information used to be. And teachers looking for Home Education Magazine at its former online address will find a link to "gang bang models," but absolutely no helpful tips on home schooling.
These are just a few of the growing number of local governments, church groups and nonprofit organizations that have recently seen their homepages turned into smut dens.
The International Lutheran Woman's Missionary League, the Nebraska Department of Education, the Ohio State Senate and the Ballet Theatre of Annapolis, Maryland, have all experienced the same fate, according to N2H2, a Web filtering company that tracks porn on the Web.
"It's a trend we started seeing several months ago," N2H2 spokesman David Burt said. "It seems to be a couple of companies, one in Armenia. They buy up lapsed domain names and convert them to porn sites."
The takeovers all involve domain names whose registration has expired. Some owners just forgot to renew. Others gave up ownership to their old address after switching over to a new name.
The domain names may have been snapped up by speculators who make a living trafficking in expired domains, according to Ron Wiener, CEO of Snapnames. His company specializes in purchasing expired names the instant they become available.
"All the good new names are gone, so speculators feast entirely on (expiring) names," Wiener said. "Most are just trying to find a buyer for it."
In many cases, the target market is the old owner.
The new owner of Manchester, Iowa's old website -- replaced with links to porn after the city inadvertently failed to renew its registration -- offered to sell it back for $550. Manchester refused, and shifted its homepage to a new address instead.
The Good News Web Designers Association, a Christian organization, has issued a warning to its members not to let domains lapse, after numerous reports emerged of Christian sites being bought by pornographers based in Russia and then held for ransom.
"Christian ministry sites, Catholic Diocesan sites, Youth Ministry sites, children's sites, Christian Web designers' own business sites, and amusement parks," have all been hit, the alert cautions.
Catholic Diocese in Cleveland and Brooklyn were among the victims, according to United Press International.
With roughly 1 million formerly registered domains opening up each month, Wiener said trafficking in them has become big business, and most get purchased the instant they're available. "This is one of the biggest stealth industries around," Wiener said. "We have customers dropping $50,000 a day on expired domains."
Besides trying to find buyers, speculators search soon-to-expire domains for those that may have significant traffic. They buy these up, and then use those who come looking for the site to boost traffic elsewhere, such as a porn site. Lists of domains set to expire are available from subscription services such as Domains Bot.
"Turns out these little cities and church groups get a fair amount of traffic," Wiener said. "They are little bits of gold, and if you get enough little chunks, you can retire."
Snapnames gets about 10 percent of its business from people who call, panicked, after they realize their domain has expired, Wiener said. If they call within five days of the expiration date -- the time an expired domain typically sits in purgatory before going back on the available list --Snapnames can usually come to the rescue. For $49, its "snapback" service will re-register the domain the instant it hits the market.
With registration periods typically running only a year or two, and people's e-mail addresses often changing, renewal notices can often get lost in the shuffle, especially at small organizations.
But even large organizations can get caught off guard. Earlier this year, Wiener fielded a desperate call from American Express. The company had forgotten to renew www.americanexpress.net and needed Snapnames to grab it back before a speculator got hold of it.
Once someone else has purchased an expired domain, it's hard to recover. Companies that lose control of a trademarked domain name can try to recover it through ICANN's dispute resolution system. A request costs $1,500 and typically takes 60 days to process.
But if a domain doesn't have trademark protection, there's really no way to get it back, other than to buy it from the new owner. Lack of trademark protection could explain why pornographers appear to be targeting expired sites of nonprofit organizations, churches and local governments.
Although she showed up weeks ago, "Tina" and her "live Web cam" haven't yet been removed from the city's former website, www.villahills.com, despite the efforts of Villa Hills officials .
"Obviously it's embarrassing," Villa Hills mayor Mike Sadouskas told the Cincinnati Enquirer last month.
Organizations wishing to avoid the same fate can sign up with services like Snapnames to have their domain bought back if it should ever accidentally expire. In response to problems with accidental expiration, Register.com, a large domain registry, offers an automatic renewal service via credit card.
Officials of the pornography websites involved could not be reached for comment.
