Microsoft claims that closing its free chat rooms will make the Internet safer. But is that the whole story? Brian Boyd reports
Georgie, a 13-year-old English girl, regularly used Internet chat rooms to talk to her friends and meet new ones. She found she had a lot in common with a 15-year-old boy who lived nearby - and the more they chatted the more they liked each other. Georgie gave the boy her mobile number, and "as the relationship developed we started talking on the phone, ringing each other every night for hours", she says. They agreed to meet. Much against Georgie's wishes, her mother insisted on accompanying her.
Just as well: the 15-year-old boy turned out to be a 47-year-old man. He was arrested, although it turned out that, according to the law, he had committed no crime. In countless other cases, though, young people have met chat-room "friends" only to be abused or even killed by paedophiles.
With the announcement that the computer giant Microsoft is to close its free chat rooms, some people are perplexed that such an innocent-sounding phrase can have such dark connotations.
Typically, all you have to do to get into a chat room - an area of the Internet where people can write messages and make online friends - is go online, choose a user name and password and log on. There are hundreds of thousands of such "rooms", organised around interests and hobbies. The vast majority are benign: bee-keepers discuss and swap information about bee-keeping; a band's fans can correspond with each other. Some chat rooms also have a practical, educational value - people with a certain type of cancer, for example, may talk to each other about treatments, and so on.
Users can see a conversation unfold in a scrolling window; as chat rooms work in real time, lots of people can type and their messages will appear in the chat window immediately.
Many chat rooms do not require registration. Users need not give the chat room their e-mail addresses; they merely need to pick nicknames. This means they cannot easily be traced. This is not a problem when the topic is advances in bee-keeping. But the anonymity of the Internet means anybody, of any age, can look for online pen-pals in a chat room designed for teenagers. By disguising their age, gender and identity, paedophiles can groom children, establishing relationships online before suggesting an exchange of telephone numbers or addresses and an eventual meeting.
The extent of paedophile activity in youth-oriented chat rooms is difficult to gauge. Some Internet organisations say one in five youths in chat rooms is at risk of coming into contact with a paedophile; others say the figure is one in three. Statistics cannot be broken down by countries, as the Internet doesn't recognise borders, and not all children report electronic contact with a paedophile, fearing they will lose their access to the Internet.
Again, it is nearly impossible to quantify how many children use chat rooms and are therefore at risk. What is known is that chat rooms in general are one of the most popular aspects of Internet use, providing social, cultural and educational forums. They are hugely popular with teenagers, partly because, unlike the telephone, they stop parents from overhearing what is being said. And a 15-year-old into, say, goth music and embroidery can "meet" other 15-year-olds with the same idiosyncratic interests. There is also the issue of image: many teens are self-conscious about their appearance, so a relationship through a chat room is especially appealing.
Not all chat-room relationships lead to meetings - some people are content to correspond electronically for years - and in many cases they are nothing more than souped-up versions of pen-pal friendships. But the constant threat of stranger danger is behind Microsoft's decision to close its free chat rooms from October 14th. A Microsoft spokesman said: "As a responsible leader we felt it necessary to make these changes, because online chat services are increasingly being misused."
The decision was welcomed by charities, including the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which has long warned of the potential for paedophiles to misuse chat rooms.
But the decision has met with cynicism in the Internet community. Microsoft will continue to operate chat rooms, but access will be based on subscription. Trained editors will monitor conversations, looking for unsuitable topics and evidence of users' being adults. Commentators suggest that Microsoft knows how popular chat rooms are and is introducing subscription for financial reasons. Microsoft says charges will require chat room users to provide personal details, so eliminating the dangers of anonymity.
Microsoft's main Internet competitors, AOL and Freeserve, have rejected the idea of also closing their rooms. "We are somewhat bemused that Microsoft has managed to pull off something of a PR coup with this announcement," said a Freeserve spokeswoman. "Whilst giving the impression of being respectable and responsible, our view is that what they are doing is nothing short of reckless."
AOL will continue its free service, which is open only to its customers. As it has their details, it can identify anyone guilty of misuse. "It's better for kids to go to moderated chat areas," says an AOL spokesman. "We have no intention of closing our chat rooms and pushing kids out." Microsoft says moderation is not totally effective, particularly as 1.2 million people use its rooms each month.
Of the Irish Internet service providers, Eircom stopped offering chat room services as far back as 1998 because of concerns about misuse. Esat BT, Yahoo and Irishchat, like many rivals around the world, still offer the service.
Whatever about Microsoft's motives, the issue is monitoring. Youth chat rooms will always thrive, so the only way to keep them safe is for specialist teams to supervise communication. But it's an expensive process - chat rooms are 24-hour operations - and it's difficult to analyse ambivalent yet often innocuous correspondence. Many teenagers view monitoring as a form of adult interference and will react accordingly.
Ian Brown, director of the UK-based Foundation for Information Policy Research, which promotes public debate about the policy implications of developments in technology, says Microsoft's decision is a hysterical overreaction.
"I could understand this if it had happened a few years ago when there wasn't much information about the potential dangers of chat rooms," he says. "But it is patronising to children. Does Microsoft think that they all sit there unaware of the dangers and also that just because they can't talk via Microsoft any more means they will stop? They'll all just turn to the hundreds of chat programs that anyone can download free off the Internet."