A link on the electoral commission website was hastily removed on Saturday after it was discovered to be redirecting users to a German porn site. 

The incident was not related to any hacking or data breach and was instead due to a failure to update the link's URL, a government spokesperson said. 

Times of Malta was on Saturday informed that a link which is meant to direct users to the European Parliament Information Office in was instead opening a site with a selection of porn videos. 

Later in the afternoon, a spokesperson for the Digital Economy Parliamentary Secretariat said the Malta Information Technology Agency was "taking the necessary action to ensure there will be no other similar instances pertaining to government websites".

He explained that the electoral commission’s website was linking to a URL that was no longer being used by the Maltese European Parliament office. The commission has since updated the link with the correct URL.

"The older URL is not owned by the Maltese government or the European Parliament but by third parties who can use it for content they deem suitable.

"This incident has no connotation (sic) to hacks or data breaches," he said.