its all to do with saving costs, m$ looked at the current situation and the way the uk public thinks and have the perfect pr stunt, current uk public view is hatred for internet chatrooms, its not even a worlwide shutdown.

So in the future unless ip ranges are blocked the chat rooms will still be available abroad, if they do get banned then kids will either move onto other chat or use their parents credit card.

Don't trust anyone who uses credit cards for age verification purposes, its only to make money, xxx sites all use the excuse its for age verification. There are many other ways to verify age.

Hundreds of thousands of people chat everyday we maybe have 1 abduction every few months, but letting your children out to play at the park etc. is probably the same except it don't make the papers.

I have to agree, in fact a park is far more dangerous more than any chatroom

I agree too, but unfortunately, the papers seem to think any stories about the big bad internet (in any form) sell more copies than a story about a kid being abducted in a park.

you are a very higly misinformed individual.

There are many icidents of sexual abuse with children that go unreported as well.

I thik if we all ran our lives by everything printed in the papers then it would be very sad indeed.

This whole issue has been about the kids.

What about the adults? We adults lose out too. (says me being selfish..lol).

More adults will lose out than children get protected by this move.
The few children that get protected will be counteered with more getting abuse because they used other chat rooms.

The pay for stuff WILL be hacked, serial numbers will appear, accounts WILL be copied, overseas clients & servers WILL be used.
I wonder how many European people will suddenly sign on as being from the Camen Islands..

Its only a matter of time before some do gooder thinks the chat on here should be scrapped too lol

http://www.nthellworld.co.uk/chat/

No danger of that Defiant - it's never used nowadays - we are all on MSN!!! Not the chatrooms tho.

Re: Microsoft to close chatrooms
 

The SAFECHAT system doesnt work on serials. People will try to hack it but wont succeed if they are trying to pretend to be a child and that in part is the whole point.

With serial authorisation the code is in the computer with only a single point authorisation process.

This is a three and four point authorisation which means The key has to be used on that specific PC at that specifc child Address from that specifc child telephone line. (CLID)

If any one of these parameters isnt correct there is no authorisation.

Simple really.

Re: Microsoft to close chatrooms
 

Shouldn't M$ do this straight away rather than on the 15 October 2003?

Re: Microsoft to close chatrooms
 

Nahh, doing it straight away would mean they didn't have enough time to get the PR machine going..

Re: Microsoft to close chatrooms
 

Not really a reply but was suffering insomnia , bored senseless and after perusing the forum I fancied chatting but many online friends are using GCN which i am finding a very flakey bit of software, and can't say i like lycos or yahoo, and whilst perusing MSN Canada found out that UK MSN 8 Subscribers can access there chat still, definitely not the only one to find out this as there was quite a few aussie users in there too.

May have been found out by other posters so sorry if repeating something already posted. Also it seems not many over there are taking the offer of paid subscription to MSN Chat via MSN8 up, lots of unhappy bunnies over there as well as here but thats nothing new where Bill Gates and his lil empire are concerned.

Re: Microsoft to close chatrooms
 

Haven't M$ closed the chatrooms already?

Re: Microsoft to close chatrooms
 

Well I've got MSN 8 and I can't get any MSN chatrooms :(

Re: Microsoft to close chatrooms
 

Don't know if its the route i took but went www.msn.com then chose msn worldwide then canada then chat and it let me straight in full use, tho it seems not many users few busy us and canadian chat rooms.