Hoax and IT flop cause web headache

France will take legal action against the hackers who created an elaborate clone of official diplomacy sites. Photo / Natalie Slade

PARIS: France yesterday suffered what might be called a bad web day. A pirate internet site looking like the official Foreign Ministry site began bombarding the world with bogus declarations and announcements.

At the same time a long-awaited official site which is supposed to present a can-do image of France to investors and tourists collapsed on its first day.

The Foreign Ministry announced that - if it could find them - it would take legal action against the web pirates who created an elaborate clone of official French diplomacy sites.

Site www.diplomatiegov.fr, or France Diplo TV, has stolen the logo and style and many of the video contents of the official site, www.diplomatie.gouv.fr.

It has also added a series of bogus diplomatic initiatives, including a purported decision by Paris to repay the "90 million gold francs" which Haiti paid to France in post-independence reparations from 1825 to 1947. Bernard Valero, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the site was a mixture of "false information and fraudulent copies" from official French and European sites.

- Independent