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Liberal candidate’s QR code leads to porn site

A poster for Justin Trudeau with erroneous QR code

The campaign organizers of Liberal Party candidate Justin Trudeau are scrambling to cover up parts of posters of him that have been put up all over his riding of Papineau, in the Villeray area.

The signs – like others in the party – have what’s called a QR code, a two-dimensional barcode that’s readable by devices like smartphones. Point the device’s camera at the code, run the program, and it spits out a website address or other information.

Unfortunately for Trudeau, whoever generated the QR code for his campaign poster made a typo. Instead of typing in “liberal.ca” – the website for the Liberal Party of Canada – he or she typed in “luberal.ca”, the site of an organization devoted to “encouraging the liberal use of lube” in sexual encounters.

Staffers, who were made aware of the problem on Thursday after someone complained, have been dispatched across the riding (fortunately for them, it is the smallest geographically in Canada) with stickers of the correct code on them.

In the meantime, the party acted quickly in getting the “luberal.ca” website offline and removing almost all traces of it from the Internet. According to the website’s owner, who said she “never asked for any of this attention” and didn’t want to be named, they’re in discussions about having the Liberal Party buy the domain name.

27 thoughts on “Liberal candidate’s QR code leads to porn site”

  1. Jim Royal

    Are you sure about this story? I scanned the QR code in the photo above, and it goes directly to Trudeau’s web page. Further, the domain luberal.ca is not even registered — there’s no domain record at all. The site is not in Google’s cache nor is there even any search results for the name. And the site is not in the Wayback Machine either.

    What’s the source, here?

    Reply ↓
    1. Mardi

      This was too funny…just re-discovered Canadian political scene. Have lived in Florida for the past 30 years…. I’ll be back as soon as I have another Prime Minister Trudeau in charge… LOL

      Reply ↓
    2. susan

      wow, they really got you ! I myself did not venture out of my home until after 12 noon today, and only used the intergoogler for like banking purposes. previous to that , (I hope)

      congratulations on your baby !

      Love your mom so much.

      Susan.

      bon chance (you don’t need it)

      Reply ↓

  10. Pingback: Liberal candidate Justin Trudeau’s QR Code Links to Porn Site

  12. Jonathan

    You really got me with this one. I was so happy to see Trudeau caught like this that I eagerly posted it to Twitter and Facebook.

    Then… I faced the truth. You played with my feelings and it hurts!

    Well done :)

    Reply ↓
  14. JS

    Bonjour Steve,

    I just sent an email to Hélène Buzzetti regarding “her” beautiful and ingenious text…

    Vraiment bravo pour ce texte, je suis habituellement très méfiant, mais là, j’ai vraiment mordu comme un poisson con!

    Take care!

    JS

    Reply ↓

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  17. JS

    Je crois que mon courriel lui a fait réaliser quelque chose :

    Erreur 404
    La page que vous tentez d’atteindre semble
    avoir été déplacée, supprimée ou n’existe pas.

    1-0 Fagstein :-)

    Reply ↓
  21. Martin

    Just tried my QR code reader on my smartphone on the photo of this poster, which you say is erroneous. It works. Ended up on the candidate’s Web site. The QR reader decodes it as justin.ca, just as it reads on the poster. Report the news right, please.

    Reply ↓

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