Yahoo shuts pedophilia-themed chat rooms
 

About bloody time!

http://news.com.com/Yahoo+shuts+pedo...3-5893892.html

Yahoo has agreed to shut down Internet chat rooms designed to promote sex between adults and children.

The agreement with the attorneys general of New York and Nebraska is the first to institute systemwide controls over chat rooms likely to be frequented by child predators.

Yahoo said it voluntarily suspended all user-created chat rooms on June 15 and is evaluating whether to reinstate the ability of users to create them.

Earlier that month, Yahoo removed or barred the posting of 70,000 rooms whose names suggested illegal conduct, including the promotion of sex between adults and children. The number represents 11.4 percent of the 614,000 names Yahoo reviewed.

Some rooms carried labels such as "kiddies who love sex," "girls 13 & up for much older men," "8-12 yo girls for older men" and "teen girls for older fat men." Many were located in chat categories titled "Schools and Education" and "Teen."

In an Oct. 7 letter of agreement with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan acknowledged that "certain individuals, interested in engaging in sexual conduct with minors, have at times entered or even created chat rooms for such purposes. Yahoo is committed to continue to work with (the) law enforcement community, to minimize, target and take action against such behavior."

The agreement is "an affirmative step for Yahoo," Spitzer said at a news conference. The attorney general said his office will look at other Internet service providers that may have similar problems.

"Because of this agreement, Yahoo chat rooms are a safer place today," Jon Bruning, Nebraska's attorney general, said in a statement.

Yahoo agreed to prescreen user-created chat room names, to reject names encouraging sexual activity between adults and children and, on finding chat rooms encouraging such activity, to purge them within 24 hours. It also agreed to develop education materials promoting the safe use of chat rooms.

In a statement, spokeswoman Mary Osako said Yahoo will also enhance online users' safety by restricting Yahoo Chat to users 18 and older and removing the Teen category.

New York and Nebraska began their investigations this year after learning that children had unfettered access to adult chat rooms.

One investigator, posing as a 14-year-old girl, reported receiving 35 personal messages of a sexual nature over 25 minutes, Spitzer said. The senders of those messages appeared to be adult chat room participants, he said.

Yahoo also agreed to donate $175,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's New York affiliates and additional free online advertising to promote Internet safety.

Story Copyright ? 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

:thumbsup

wow, 70k rooms. can't believe people are that sick

For a while there it looked like they might go the way of MSN and shut rooms down altogether. This measure should be enough--only system-generated rooms as opposed to user-generated.

That's the thing I like about Yahoo. They always take immediate action.

The problem sint evben just confined to the kiddie themed rooms..go into almost any unmoderated chatroom and say "I'm a 16 year old girl with a sex question" or something similar and watch how many IMs you get hit with.

For me, as a parent, chatrooms are a greater fear over my kids surfing porn or violent sites....no child was ever harmed looking at a pair of boobs, but chatrooms give even a softie liberal like me the chills. They are the biggest reason I have a keylogger on my kids' computer.

finally someone listends, now maybe sponsors will listen to the content thiefs, credit card scams, password thiefs, tgps promotiung with child thumbs, stolen members area content promoting the sites, scamming billing solutions, the list goes on. funny how many times you try and contact someone they dont give a shit that they are losing money they just let it fly.

Totally... I have to agree there. Very dangerous, especially for a kid who's trying to figure everything out.

what the hell took them so long?

LOL, these pedo rooms have been there forever.
Yahoo took them down cause they got sued.

Tried to contact them back in 99 to report some illegal site they were hosting,it was impossible to get it shut down. They deserve all fines they get.

:1orglaugh delusional perverts

Perhaps I should have used [/sarcasm]

LOL.. :winkwink:

'Bout damn time.

Although I do believe that it is ultimately a parent's responsibility to supervise their children on the internet. The only computer mine are allowed to use for 'online' is right in the kitchen and their computer downstairs isn't hooked up to the net, they can only play games on it. I would NEVER allow my children to have a computer in their bedroom where they could be doing god knows what behind closed doors. It's up to us to parent our own children, not society.