The domain name is perilously close to that of PornHub.

New Plymouth District Council has a porn problem, but it might not be the type of problem you're thinking.

The domain name to the council's website is perilously close to a name of another website that will take the user to the well known pornography site PornHub.

While newplymouthnz.com will take you to the council's website where you can catch up council news, have your say on local issues and find out about upcoming events, a similar address with a slightly different suffix will take users straight to hardcore pornography.

PornHub has accidentally been mixed up with a New Plymouth District Council website.

The council isn't happy about the domain names being so similar, especially since 14 years ago they purchased newplymouth.com from a Korean man who had linked it to a hard-core porn website.

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"It's easy to confuse that URL with our official one of newplymouthnz.com so we're trying to get ownership of it and get that redirection removed," council customer and regulatory solutions manager Katrina Brunton said.

"We're concerned that people will come across this site by accident, particularly young people, and we feel obliged to warn the public about it."

Brunton said the council had laid a complaint with the Domain Names Commission regarding the URL and the Department of Internal Affairs regarding the content of the website.

Brunton said the owner of the domain name had denied the council's request to remove the redirection of the URL to the porn site but had until September 8 to respond to the Domain Names Commission.

"The number of possible variations is huge and we can't afford to own them all so we selected the most obvious alternatives but promote only newplymouthnz.com," Brunton said.

PornHub's marketing manager Alex Klein said the porn giant didn't own the domain nor had they ever attempted to purchase it.

"This would make very little sense for us as a property to own," he said.

"This is the first time any of this has come to our attention.

"We have no idea why the site is redirecting to ours, might be someone's idea of a joke."

In 2002 the council paid $8400 to a Korean man to give up the domain name newplymouthnz.com - the domain name which now links to the council website - after he had linked it to another porn website.

At the time council chief executive Roger Kerr-Newell said the council were aware of a number of similar URLs but only wanted to purchase the main ones.