UPDATED/Joseph Muscat using domain names of rival politicians to trick people into his website

Published: May 26, 2017 at 12:17pm

Update: Since this post was published, the link to josephmuscat.com from salvumallia.com has been disabled.

The Prime Minister is using the domain names of rival politicians to trick people into entering his website, josephmuscat.com, on which the entire Labour Party – which has been ‘disappeared’ – is centring its election campaign.

He is doing this by registering the personal names of key rival politicians as domains owned by his campaign aides. Those domains are then used to direct people who run a search on the names of rival politicians to josephmuscat.com instead.

Muscat did this first by registering simonbusuttil.com and using it to direct people to josephmuscat.com. After a legal challenge was put up by lawyers working for the Nationalist Party leader, the link was disabled.

The Prime Minister then began doing the same thing with a domain registered by his aides in the personal name of the popular Nationalist Party candidate Salvu Mallia. If you log on to salvumallia.com it takes you straight to josephmuscat.com and ‘L-Aqwa Zmien’.