Heinz accidentally directs customers to porn site

A bottle of 'hot' ketchup turned out to be just that, after accidentally directing customers to a hardcore porn website.

The QR code on the back of the Heinz bottle formed part of a promotion that ran between 2012 and 2014, and was supposed to link to a web page where customers could design their own label.

But when German shopper Daniel Korell recently scanned the code, he was taken somewhere else instead - German porn site Fundorado. He tried on several different phones - as well as typing in the web address directly - all with the same result.

Mr Korell posted his discovery on the company's Facebook page. "Your ketchup is probably not for minors," he wrote.

The reason for the dodgy link is that Heinz failed to renew the domain name, which expired earlier this year. When it was put on sale again earlier this year, Fundorado snapped it up and filled it with its own content.

Heinz Ketchup carries a sell-by date of more than a year after it appears on the shelves.

"The bottle may be a leftover, but that's the case in many households," points out Mr Korell. For me it is incomprehensible that the domain wasn't secured for at least one or two years. A .de domain name really doesn't cost the earth."

Heinz has admitted its mistake and says that if Mr Korell still wants to design a new label, it will send him a free bottle printed with his design.

But Fundorado has offered him what many might see as a better option - a year's subscription to its site for free.

So-called cyber-squatting is a major headache for brands, which are frequently forced to buy up websites linked to their names, for fear someone else will instead.

Yahoo, which owns Flickr and Tumblr, recently took action against three adult 'dating' sites which were using names such as TumblrSexDating.nl and FlickrDating.nl.

And with new domain names .porn and .adult released onto the market earlier this month, brands and celebrities are worried. Indeed, the number of cyber-squatting disputes has trebled since the launch of the new domains.

Singer Taylor Swift was recently reported to have bought TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult, just to make sure nobody else snapped them up first. Other celebrities are believed to be doing the same.

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