Report condemns chat-room abuse

 

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Posted on 20 Mar 2001 at 17:53

The Internet Crime Forum has published a report on chat-room abuse, although its findings illustrate what a difficult phenomenon it is to police.

The report, called Chat Wise, Street Wise - Children and Internet Services, was produced by the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) sub-group consisting of representatives from the IT industry, child-welfare groups, the government and regulatory bodies.

The report acknowledges that the risk is substantial and growing, especially considering around 33 per cent of the UK population is online, but interestingly enough the report says that the offline risk from someone known to the child is much greater.

Some of the recommendations include that children should only be allowed onto chat rooms aimed at their own age group that are properly moderated and supervised with a level of traceability for its users. The providers of chat services should provide a reasonable amount of care and ISPs should warn users about the potential risks of chat rooms.

The report also supports an awareness campaign aimed at parents and a kitemarking system for approved chat rooms. Law enforcers should have special training to deal with Internet offences and there should be a quick and accessible method of reporting incidents.

All this sounds very sensible, but elsewhere the report betrays how difficult chat-room crime will be to police. "Issues of traceability and anonymity are extremely complex, since tools which can be useful in identifying perpetrators can also be used by adults with a sexual interest in children to identify potential victims," says the report.

"Of particular concern is the need to protect the identity of young users connecting to the Internet through school systems and using school email addresses."

The report also acknowledges there's a limit to what can be done by ISPs considering the amount of traffic they have to deal with and current privacy laws. "The need for Internet Service Providers to obtain and where necessary retain data on Internet users, in order to investigate misuse, has to be balanced against the requirements of both UK and EU data protection legislation and the technical capabilities. The legislation restricts the type of data which can be logged and the length of time for which it can be stored."

But the fact the report has been produced at all shows that the issue is being taken seriously, especially as Britain's favourite brain box, Carol Vorderman, has been doing the rounds of daytime TV trying to convince parents this is a real problem. The issue has been discussed in the House of Commons this week, so we may be close to getting some new legislation. Read the report for yourself here.

Author: Caroline Gilmour