With Christmas fast approaching, Santa Claus reached out for a little help from Stopbadware.org this week.
The consumer advocacy group said it was approached by an Incline Village, Nevada, man who has legally changed his name to Santa Claus, who asked them to help figure out why his Web site was being flagged by Google Inc.’s Web site filters.
It turned out that Santa’s Web site, Santaslink.net had been hacked.
Claus is a children’s advocate who has travelled across the U.S. meeting with legislators, according to his Web site. He also makes seasonal appearances as Saint Nick.
“He had consulted local experts, which we can only assume were elves, but they were unable to identify anything wrong with his site,” wrote StopBadware.org Developer Jason Callina, in a Thursday blog posting.
“Nestled all snug in the bottom of his homepage was a nice little bit of code containing a badware link,” he added.
The problem was soon resolved “and the workshop is once again a safe place,” Callina said.
Stopbadware.org was founded earlier this year, with funding from Google Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd. and Sun Microsystems Inc. as a community watchdog organization to help protect consumers from malicious software like spyware and viruses.
Callina said he’s learned something from the Santa Claus experience.
“The moral of the story is that the Grinches who are looking to spread their unsafe software are willing to hack even Santa’s Web site.”