Technology
Protecting Children in Internet Chat Rooms
Around one-third of the UK population is now online and it is thought that nearly 5 million children use the internet. Internet ‘Chat’ is very popular among young people - offering the opportunity for immediate realtime access to people of all ages and cultures from across the world. Chat enables users to speak to each other as equals, regardless of many of the social, cultural, religious, geographical or potentially discriminatory obstacles which may inhibit them offline.
The Internet Crime Forum set up a sub to study Chatroom issues in June 1999. The subgroup included representatives from industry, law enforcement, child welfare, government, civil liberties and regulatory bodies, with the Internet Watch Foundation in the chair. The role of the group was to identify and quantify the problems of chat services on the Internet and to consider and evaluate potential means of addressing them. It is impossible to give an accurate figure for the total number of chat facilities available to UK users, but available statistics indicate that it is over 100,000.
It is essential to recognise that Chat can be abused by a criminal minority to make contact with children with a view to establishing and developing a sexual relationship with them in the ‘real world’. Such relationships can then be pursued through other media such as instant messaging, email and mobile telephones. Whilst an accurate assessment of the risk to children is very hard to make, it is believed this risk is growing - albeit at a slower rate than the overall growth of internet activity. Nevertheless, the available evidence highlights the importance of recommending some preventative strategies for protecting children, in view of the opportunity for anonymous paedophile contact and the potential damage done to children.
In response to these issues and considered in detail in the full paper, a number of recommendations were agreed by the Internet Crime Forum, and the key safety messages for children’s chat room activity were identified.
Recommendations
Children should use chat services specifically targeted at their own age range which have adequate levels of care and protection as outlined in (c) below.
Relevant UK legislation should be kept under constant and comprehensive review to ensure that it can meet changing circumstances, both online and offline, to protect children from abuse.
The various sectors of the IT industry should continue to research better, cheaper and more user-friendly technical solutions to the potential dangers of chat, including the identification and investigation of improved measures to ensure an appropriate level of traceability.
Providers of chat services specifically aimed at children should provide a responsible standard of care to protect their users. The nature and extent of protective measures should be transparent to all users.
A focused education and awareness programme should be aimed at parents and other carers to advise them of the potential risks to children using chat services and appropriate steps they can take to protect them.
All Internet Service Providers should provide clear advice to their subscribers about the potential hazards of chat and the simple safety messages (see below) to help avoid them.
Industry, user groups and children’s organisations should jointly explore the possibility of introducing a kitemarking scheme which would offer a simple way for parents to identify chat services committed to providing an enhanced standard of care for young users.
A user-friendly reporting mechanism should be available to facilitate the prompt reporting and investigation of incidents in chat rooms.
Law enforcement officers should have specialised training and increased resources to ensure a prompt and effective response to reports of incidents in chat rooms. The new National High-Tech Crime Unit (duties now taken over by the Serious Organised Crime Agency) should ensure that online protection of children is and remains a high priority.
Safety messages - ‘Chat Wise, Street Wise’
| This document is published for archival/historical purposes. It will not be updated. |
Don’t give out personal details, photographs, or any other information that could be used to identify you, such as information about your family, where you live or the school you go to.
Don’t take other people at face value – they may not be what they seem.
Never arrange to meet someone you’ve only ever previously met on the Internet without first telling your parents, getting their permission and taking a responsible adult with you. The first meeting should always be in a public place.
Always stay in the public areas of chat where there are other people around.
Don’t open an attachment or downloaded file unless you know and trust the person who has sent it.
Never respond directly to anything you find disturbing – save or print it, log off, and tell an adult.
Download the "Chat Wise, Street Wise" report in full
Last update: Thursday, September 04, 2008