Visitors to seafront automobile park shocked after pranksters beam pornography onto interactive data board

Villagers claim poetic justice has been served after an unwanted touchscreen information board was hacked by pranksters – who used it to beam pornography to shocked visitors.

Councillors in the Welsh coastal village of Laugharne had installed the £10,000 touchscreen information board to warn drivers about the dangerous high tides that regularly swamped the seafront car park.

But a group of tech-savvy teenagers hacked into the device’s Wi-Fi to stream hard-core adult entertainment.

The electronic sign company forgot to download a firewall to stop anyone mirroring images from their mobile phone onto the screen. 

Local officials have now turned off the screen and hope to get it back up and running within a couple of months.

They are replacing it with the words HIGH TIDE written in black paint on a piece of plywood for the time being. 

However, a number of residents in the village – made famous by poet Dylan Thomas – say they are happy to see the electronic sign shut down as they did not want it in the first place.

One resident, who did not want to be named, joked: ‘I don’t know what Dylan Thomas would have made of it but I think he would have seen the funny side.’

The £10,000 touchscreen information board (pictured) in the Welsh coastal village of Laugharne was by a group of tech-savvy teenagers

The touchscreen information board to warn drivers about the dangerous high tides that swamp the seafront car park

Local officials have replaced the screen with the words HIGH TIDE written in black paint on a piece of plywood for the time being

Council records show the sign cost taxpayers £10,591, a huge chunk of the town council’s budget.

One woman said: ‘The idea was to warn visitors about how fast the tide can come in at certain times of the year.

‘But someone thought it would be funny if they put some naughty websites on screen instead.

‘The council got to hear about it and they’ve switched it off altogether.’

Another source in the village said: ‘Some mischievous teenagers thought it would be funny to start showing pornography on it.

‘There were a lot of embarrassed people who had come to park there.’

Local councillor Alderman Philip Wilson, 77, who runs a stall at the weekly bric-a-brac market in the car park next to historic Laugharne Castle, said: ‘Unfortunately the sign was used by some teenagers to watch porn.

‘It’s been turned off but hopefully we will have it back again in a couple of months.

‘It’s there to tell people when there are big autumn and spring tides which flood the car park.

‘People were driving through the flood water and causing problems for the local residents. We can also use it for other messages for the local community.’

Dylan Thomas (pictured in 1947) was living in Laugharne in the 1930s when he got the idea for Under Milk Wood, one of his most famous works

Council records show the sign cost taxpayers £10,591.20, a huge chunk of the council’s budget

A number of residents in the village, made famous by poet Dylan Thomas, say they are happy to see the electronic sign shut down as they did not want it in the first place

Cars in the car park which have fallen victim to the flooding 

Dylan Thomas was living in Laugharne in the 1930s when he got the idea for Under Milk Wood, one of his most famous works.

He described the village as ‘a very odd town’ and ‘a good place, undiscovered by painters because the sea is mostly mud and nobody knows when the water will come in or go out or where it comes from anyway.’

The boathouse overlooking the Taf estuary where Thomas wrote poetry is visited by thousands of people every year. The poet is buried in a churchyard in the town.

MailOnline have approached Laugharne Township Community Council for a comment.