Footballer named on BBC website

A famous footballer at the centre of a legal battle over "kiss-and-tell" revelations was inadvertently identified by a BBC website yesterday.

The footballer, who has taken out an injunction to prevent the alleged story being published in a tabloid newspaper, was named in messages on a BBC site dedicated to the rise and fall of celebrities. BBC executives were reviewing how messages on the Celebdaq site could be monitored to prevent further possible libels and breaches of the law.

A BBC spokeswoman said: "The issue of what happened is under review." She said because of the potential for legal action she was not prepared to comment further.

The corporation could face a costly legal battle over the postings on the Celebdaq site, which allows users to play a game based on the supposed stock values of famous people.

A teacher won a libel action last year over allegations posted by a former pupil on Friends Reunited, a website that puts users in touch with their old schoolfriends, in a test case that established the internet was not beyond the defamation law.

Popbitch, a celebrity gossip website, was forced to remove a rumour about David Beckham last year after being threatened with legal action from the footballer's lawyers.

Two years ago, Demon, an internet service provider, paid more than £200,000 to settle a libel action over postings about Dr Laurence Godfrey, a physicist. Lawyers described the messages as "squalid, obscene and defamatory".

Although the BBC says that it vets all the message boards on children's sites and the Asian network, it allows other website forums to exist with less stringent checks.

Instead of sites being "premoderated" to stop offensive posts reaching a page, a system of post-moderation editing allows message boards to flow more freely.