Pennsylvania-based H. J. Heinz Company, maker of a much beloved condiment across the world — Heinz Tomato Ketchup — just learned the hard way that the Internet is forever and that names, especially domain names, can come back to bite you.

The Independent reports that a German man was in for a surprise when he scanned a QR code on a Heinz ketchup bottle and it took him to the German hardcore pornography site Fundorado. While there may be an overlap between Heinz ketchup users and porn website viewers, this was not the intention of Heinz.

According to TheLocal.de, the whole affair begins because Heinz ran a contest between 2012 and 2014 and registered a website to support said contest. However, the condiment company let the domain expire and it was bought by Fundorado. It is unknown how many people may still have ketchup bottles printed during that period in Germany.

Upon discovering the QR code, Daniel Korell, the German man in question, went to Facebook with this unsettling news (in German).

“Your ketchup is probably not for minors,” Korell wrote. “Maybe you should give the IT Department the information – the posted happens anyway when you scan the QR-code on the Heinz bottle. Tested several phones with QR code readers. Oh, for direct input of the URL you get the same result.”

A Heinz representative replied on Korell’s Facebook post with the obvious, stating that the label was old and that the QR-code would not direct to the contest site anymore after all. The company also apologized for the resulting mix-up. Another post offered him a new bottle free of charge and that he could create his own label (the translation is murky).

Continuing the good humor, Fundorado raised the suggestion that Heinz had had confused their “Hot Pink” porn website with the condiment producer’s “Pink EZ Squirt” ketchup. And German website Bild reported that the pornography portal offered Korell free membership to the site.

After all, with that bottle of ketchup, Korell has instant access with any mobile device…

The lesson: Domains are cheap, don’t get caught with your pants down

Right now on GoDaddy.com, I can purchase a .com domain for 10 years for $145. To a huge, multi-national corporation like Heinz that would be a drop in the bucket, not to mention that chances are they could get it for a lot cheaper.

Not that many companies would need to keep the domain registered for a full 10 years — but at least adding two to three would have given more than enough time for bottles with the contest QR code to become novelties.

Ordinarily, when people put images up on the Internet they’re warned: “The Internet is forever.” But, the inverse is also true when products have URLs printed on them. This is already a thing with phone numbers. For example, the New York Post reported in 2013 that the phone number for the Bronx Bombers to sell sold Yankee’s tickets had become a phone sex hotline.

Having a URL or a phone number expire is inevitable, all a company can do is acknowledge and move on. Fortunately, a QR code going to hardcore porn is more silly than disastrous, just like Yankee’s ticket buyers accidentally phoning up a sex line instead of getting the box office.

Image credit: Heinz