Supervisor's Official Website Expires, Becomes Ad Space

Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit’s website briefly dropped out of sight, becoming online ad space after the domain name was allowed to expire, it was revealed Tuesday.

Users attempting to click to Benoit’s official page from Internet Explorer, Chrome or any other platform Tuesday afternoon were directed to a page listing racing and mountain bikes for sale.

The county’s Fourth District web address is www.rivco4.org. The same page came up whether users accessed it via a search engine or the county’s web portal.

The site has since been restored.

“It came to our attention that the site was gone on Sunday night, and we’ve been working with the IT department since that time to get this resolved,” Benoit’s chief of staff, Michelle DeArmond, told City News Service on Tuesday night.

DeArmond said it was the Department of Information Technology’s responsibility to maintain active domain name registration.

“We’re looking into why this happened,” she said. “There are concerns.”

-- City News Service