Pornography site PornHub, which is blocked by the Indonesian government, has annoyed the Communications and Information Ministry with the discovery of an account on the website claiming to be owned by the ministry.

Screenshots of the account with the username Kemkominfo — the Indonesian abbreviation of the ministry— on the porn site recently circulated in social media.

The account even had a blue check mark, indicating that it had been verified as an official account by PornHub.

The account used the logo of the ministry as its profile picture with the “About” section reading: “Official Pornhub Account of Ministry of Communications and Information of the Republic of Indonesia”.

The ministry denies creating the account, noting it had blocked access to the website in 2017 because of its pornographic content, in line with Article 27 of the 2016 Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law.

“The ministry reminds netizens that distributing or transmitting electronic information and/or electronic documents with pornographic content is a cybercrime according to the ITE Law with up to six years of imprisonment and Rp 1 billion in fines,” the ministry’s spokesman, Ferdinandus Setu, said in a statement.

Ferdinandus said the ministry was cooperating with the National Police’s cybercrime division to investigate the “electronic information fraud” or “identity” fraud in the name of the ministry.

The ministry said it had also emailed the PornHub management to protest that the name and logo of the ministry had been used by an account on the website.

“We keep working and taking strategic steps to keep Indonesian cyberspace [safe] from negative content, including by blocking websites and social media that host porn,” he said, adding that, as of November this year, the ministry had blocked more than 1.5 million websites and social media accounts containing pornographic materials.

As of Friday morning the account in question no longer exists on PornHub. (ami)