Vouchercode site uses Madeleine McCann picture to promote Portugal holidays

domainseller200 · May 8, 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-17991038

Ether an intentional ploy for links OR some stupid idiot whose head has been in the sand, and googled "portugal child" on Google images !!!

Words escape me !!

ratboy · May 8, 2012

Never heard of Voucher Digg - presume it's some shit affiliate site.

Reading around, I'd say it was well handled by Low Cost Holidays, and they look to have loads of new links being generated by it (on the upside) or a nightmare start to the week for someone!!

rob · May 8, 2012

Linkbait hit a new low.

There have been a few using natural disasters and the like before but this takes the biscuit.

Alien · May 8, 2012

Absolutely dreadful, really, really low.

PS: See the site won't even load, I bet their bandwidth is being hammered.

Alien · May 8, 2012

ratboy said:
Never heard of Voucher Digg - presume it's some shit affiliate site.

Reading around, I'd say it was well handled by Low Cost Holidays, and they look to have loads of new links being generated by it (on the upside) or a nightmare start to the week for someone!!

Voucher Digg Group, Norwich according to whois. Very poor. :-(

I reckon it's a student, if you look at address details.

LisaV · May 10, 2012

I would really really like to hope that this is a student who simply hasn't done his homework than a deliberate attempt to gain a little publicity by someone who doesn't care what form that publicity takes.

It's absolutely horrendous.

Edwin · May 10, 2012

Well, it's had an impact. Here's what the site now says (appalling grammar and all)

We were sorry!

Our editing team made the mistake, that Madeleine McCann’s image was
linked to the discount holidays to Portugal. We are sorry for the
serious wrongdoing that occurred. We unreservedly apologise for the
hurt suffered by Mr. and Mrs. McCann.

We regret our not acting faster to sort things out because of our
editing team and management overseas not being concerned about the
British social news and not realizing the wrongdoing. We realise that
this explanation and simply apologising are not enough, because the
hurt and damage are irretrievable. In the coming days, we shut down
voucherdigg.co.uk to show our sincere apology.

We deeply apologies to Mr. and Mrs. McCann.
We deeply apologies to the society.
We also apologies to the lowcostholidays for the negative brand
affect, who has nothing to do with this issue.

Vourcherdigg.co.uk team

LisaV · May 10, 2012

Well, despite the appalling spelling and grammar mistakes, their apology does sound sincere enough.

However what they haven't done is said what steps they will take to ensure it doesn't happen again. I'd want to know who was responsible and where they got the image from, then better practices need to be put in place to ensure that strict guidelines are followed when sourcing images in future.