How the November issue of the Face got through the net is a bit of a mystery. The magazine was sealed in lurid pink plastic with "sex" emblazoned across the front in huge capital letters. Inside, the cover featured a topless model wearing a black G-string.

"It sold out very fast," one news agent who asked not to be identified said yesterday. "But I don't see the problem. Kids don't buy this magazine and it was sealed in plastic."

The offending issue prompted a bout of indignation from the tabloid New Paper yesterday.

"How did smut slip into Singapore?" it asked. The tabloid reprinted both the front cover and the shot of the model, but said it had blacked out the woman's bare breasts "for obvious reasons".

Singapore typically censors and bans publications and films deemed to have excessive amounts of sex and violence, references to drug use and material which could foment religious or racial intolerance between the Chinese, Malay and Indian communities. Titles like Playboy and Penthouse are obviously banned, but the women's magazine Cosmopolitan is also considered too racy.

Distributors regulate themselves via guidelines laid out by the Films and Publications Department, which falls within the Ministry of Information and the Arts.

No one at the ministry was available to comment yesterday, but a spokesman for the Films and Publications Department told the New Paper that the Face's November issue "should not have been distributed under the Registered Importers Scheme".

Parents interviewed by the New Paper were split on whether they would want their children to see the issue of the magazine, with one man acknowledging that the Internet was making it even tougher to keep certain material away from young eyes.