Anything that has a use is open to abuse.

Microsoft has done this to save money and lawsuits, there are tons of other places (eg. www.habbohotel.com). All microsoft has done is saved it's neck and made a bad situation worse.

No your not. You can try and do whatever in this country because our goverment always has a soft spot for do gooders. But closing chartrooms down and messenger solve's nothing. They can only do things in this country their are others you know.

This makes me sick anyway. Talking about chatrooms and them. Chatrooms used to be fun and then people think oh that sick stuff now when their mentioned

Agreed

Quite possibly, but someones got to start somewhere. Agreed that it will drive the existing chatroom users underground as such, but with no chat rooms available new users won't be attracted.

Places like habbahotel, Neopets, etc etc need to be strictly controlled to provide a safe place for kids. This is no different to sending them to school, or watching them in the garden, you need to know where they are etc.

It has to start somewhere ...

Chatroom are useful, I've used them oftem, but there need to be restrictions on their use. M$ have said they will still exist, but now you pay. Keeps the kids off them.

Anyway what ever happened for chatrooms for adults?

I never use chat rooms, just forums - but this has just occured to me.

Great, more rubbish to waste pocket money on.

NOPE,

Taking control out of this country would makes things worse. At least ISP's and so on can keep an eye on things if their over here.

Also something that really annoys me is that fact that people let this happen anyway. I have put software on my sons computer and tweaked it so I can happily leave him on the net and not worry. If some parents can't do something simple like this then WTF are they letting their kids on their for. Do they know how easy it is to get on a HARDCORE website just through a spelling mistake!!!

TUT TUT

I have often done this it's quite disturbing:eek:

Dam my bad spelling.

But it won't ... kids have mobile phones and their parents pay for them. There are too many parents who find it easier to pay up to keep the kids quiet rather than take an interest in what they're getting up to.

Defiant has a good point here ... we don't seem to agree on much in this forum ( ;) ) but p0rn really is far too easy to stumble across. The other day I was looking for sites where I could get ideas for home movie making (I have a digi-8 camera and iMovie on my Mac) and, naively perhaps, tapped 'home video' into Google. There wasn't a single non-p0rno link on the first page of results.

Hang on do Microsoft think the kids in this day and age are thick or something.

Check this out,

So you can still get on msn chat for free after that date. I'll put money on this is what the kids will do.


http://ca.msn.com/

What the MSN spokesperson said on tv this morning was that the main problem is the non monitored chat rooms that they have access to.

The monitored chat rooms are not such a problem as any problems soon get sorted out.

So it seems obvious to simply just prevent access to any non monitored chat rooms & have just the monitored ones.

Also, is this worldwide or just in the UK?
If not so, what will prevent a UK user from using the US systems?

Chat rooms CAN be very benificial and provide hours of entertainment to both adults and children.

Yes there are some problems with the perverts that prey on them, but to remove them all is a great shame.

Now all the perverts will move to yahoo etc, use overseas accessable clients and do it all unmonitored.

The kids will do the same in order to be able to use chatrooms for free.

The end result will be a short period where they all have to go and change thier nicknames etc and swap servers without a little bit of chatting, but will soon resume normal use.

I'd imagine blocking certian IP range's which I hope dont happen because I believe the internet should be open and free. Their not solving anything their just trying to be clever. Kids will find other place's to chat. many no doubt use the irc channels too. That seems to be getting more and more popular

Do you know how effective these spoftware programs are?
They are not 100% efficient, so your son isnt as protected as you may think.

The only 100% effective way is to either ban or supervise.


The way things are going I can foresee an internet age limit being made law in 3 years, dispite oposition made by prime minister Charles Kenedy.

Having worked in IT and always been into it since I was 13yrs old I tend think I have done a better job than most. Your correct though about the software thats why like I already said I have put tweaks on their too ;)