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Be Careful of Chat RoomsYou never know who is listening
Watch out for chat rooms. FYI Thank God for small favors... Shannon could hear the footsteps behind her as she walked toward home. The thought of being followed made her heart beat faster. "You're being silly," she told herself, "noone is following you." To be safe, she began to walk faster, but the footsteps kept up with her pace. She was afraid to look back and she was glad she was almost home. Shannon said a quick prayer, "God please get me home safe." She saw the porch light burning and ran the rest of the way to her house. Once inside, she leaned against the door for a moment, relieved to be in the safety of her home. She glanced out the window to see if anyone was there. The sidewalk was empty. After tossing her books on the sofa, she decided to grab a snack and get on-line. She logged on under her screen name "ByAngel213". She checked her Buddy List and saw "GoTo123" was on. She sent him an instant message: Meanwhile......"GoTo123" went to the member menu and began to search for her profile. When it came up, he highlighted it and printed it out. He took out a pen and began to write down what he knew about Angel, so far. Her name: Shannon Besides this information, he knew she lived in Canton because she had just told him. He knew she stayed by herself until 6:30 p.m. every afternoon until her parents came home from work. He knew she played softball on Thursday afternoons on the school team, and the team was named the Canton Cats. Her favorite number 7 was printed on her jersey. He knew she was in the seventh grade at the Canton Junior High School. She had told him all this in the conversations they had on-line. He had enough information to find her now. Shannon didn't tell her parents about the incident on the way home from the ball park that day. She didn't want them to make a scene and stop her from walking home from the softball games. Parents were always overreacting and hers were the worst. It made her wish she was not an only child. Maybe if she had brothers and sisters, her parents wouldn't be so overprotective. By Thursday, Shannon had forgotten about the footsteps following her. Her game was in full swing when suddenly she felt someone staring at her. It was then that the memory came back. She glanced up from her second base position to see a man watching her closely. He was leaning against the fence behind first base and he smiled when she looked at him. He didn't look scary and she quickly dismissed the fear she had felt. After the game, he sat on a bleacher while she talked to the coach. She noticed his smile once again as she walked past him. He nodded and she smiled back. He noticed her name on the back of her shirt. He knew he had found her. Quietly, he walked a safe distance behind her. It was only a few blocks to Shannon's home, and once he saw where she lived he quickly returned to the park to get his car. Now he had to wait. He decided to get a bite to eat until the time came to go to Shannon's house. He drove to a fast food restaurant and sat there until time to make his move. Shannon was in her room later that evening when she heard voices in the living room. "Shannon, come here," her father called. The man smiled. "I know I told you all that, but it wasn't true. You see, Shannon, there are people on line who pretend to be kids; I was one of them. But while others do it to find kids and hurt them, I belong to a group of parents who do it to protect kids from predators. I came here to find you to teach you how dangerous it is to give out too much information to people on-line. You told me enough about yourself to make it easy for me to find you. Your name, the school you went to, the name of your ball team and the position you played. The number and name on your jersey just made finding you a breeze." Shannon was stunned. "You mean you don't live in Michigan?" That night Shannon and her dad and Mom all knelt down together and prayed. They thanked God for protecting Shannon from what could have been a tragic situation. Please send this to as many people as you can to teach them not to give any information about themselves. This world we live in today is too dangerous to even give out your age, let alone anything else. Be safe.
Chat roomFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.A chat room is an online forum where people can chat online (talk by broadcasting messages to people on the same forum in real time). Sometimes these venues are moderated either by limiting who is allowed to speak (not common), or by having moderation volunteers patrol the venue watching for disruptive or otherwise undesirable behavior. Chat systems include Internet Relay Chat (or IRC, where rooms are called "channels"), Jabber, and several proprietary systems on the Microsoft Windows and Java platforms. Some chat rooms go beyond text messages incorporating 2D and 3D graphics with avatars (these types of systems are also referred to as visual chat or virtual chat). Two examples of 2D chat rooms are The Palace and more recently The Manor. These environments are capable of incorporating elements such as games and educational material most often developed by individual site owners, who in general are simply more advanced users of the systems. Some chat room sites incorporate audio and video communications. People may chat in audio and watch each other there. Lesser known is the UNIX based talker and the French Minitel. Chatrooms are often confused (especially by the popular media) with discussion groups, which are similar but do not take place in real time and are usually run over the World Wide Web.Recently much chat room and instant messaging technology has begun to merge as the dominance of the big three instant messaging providers (AOL, Yahoo and MSN) have tied chat rooms directly into their instant messaging interfaces. This centralization trend is likely to continue to dominate the chat world as these providers begin to merge their services and cooperate in their IM and chat protocols. One of the first novels to explore the phenomenon of Internet Chatting is Chatroom Blues by India-based novelist Sunil R. Nair. Chatroom Blues (ISBN 8190166905), an experimental work of fiction was published by PrintReach Publications. The book depicts the dark side of people on the chat sites who use the anonymity of the chat room to express who they really are. The main character, Manav, is a failed writer who gets on a chatsite and meets the flotsam of humanity -- people in cyber existence, fourteen-year-old girls, blind men, bored housewives and cold-blooded murderers. Chatroom Blues is one of the first works of fiction to delve into the minds of people who lead a dual life -- one in the real world and another in an artificial medium.
Chat rooms targetted by Internet Watch Foundation Chat rooms targetted by Internet Watch Foundation The review, published last month, praised the work done by IWF and recommended its focus be extended to online chat rooms. Chatrooms are increasingly used by paedophiles to entice children into sexually explicit conversations and meetings. David Kerr, chief executive of IWF believes chat rooms are "the next big problem" in the fight against child exploitation on the Internet. Kerr wants the police to set up a quick response unit to deal solely with Web content, "that way as soon as a report is made, the police can go in there," he said. Such a unit is currently under consideration by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). Kerr also believes chat room providers should employ supervisors in chat rooms to monitor what is happening around the clock. Although the police deny using entrapment methods on the Internet, Kerr thinks officers patrolling the Net could be beneficial in the battle against paedophiles, but does not support the US entrapment tactics, "it may need to be a bit more restricted than in America," he said. The UK legal system takes a dim view of entrapment policies and cases judged to involve ‘agent provocateurs' could be thrown out of court. Kerr encourages Internet users to help the authorities by reporting suspicious activity in chat rooms although he admitted it is difficult to gauge suspicious behaviour and acknowledged the easy use of subterfuge on the Net. The IWF has been calling for industry-wide recognition of the dangers of chat rooms since its inception in 1996. Last year it received 2407 reports, of which 447 were judged to contain illegal material. Most of the cases involved child pornography. News groups and bulletin boards are the most likely source for images of child pornography according to Kerr. Although it is difficult to assess how much pornography is available, he believes it is relatively small, with only one in every 1000 news groups carrying illegal material.
Microsoft's Rivals Won't Shut Chat Rooms
Free chat rooms have been among the most popular features of the Internet since long before its commercialization. But from the start, chat rooms have been considered a haven for criminal behavior, with child predators getting the most attention from law enforcement agencies. More recently, consumers have expressed frustration with the barrage of spam, including postings that link to pornographic sites.
On Tuesday, in response to those complaints, Microsoft said that it was shutting its free chat service in the United States and 28 other countries in an effort to curtail the use of the service for pornography, spam and other inappropriate activities. "We were seeing an increase in complaints from customers about how chat was being used," said Lisa Gurry, group product manager for MSN at Microsoft. Yesterday, Yahoo, which has even more chat room participants than Microsoft, said that it would not follow Microsoft's lead and start charging. "Currently, we have no plans to announce any policy changes to our service," said Mary Osako, a spokeswoman for Yahoo. And AOL noted that its primary chat rooms were already for subscribers only. "We've always had a strong commitment to safety, security and privacy," said Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for America Online Incorporated. AOL said its chat rooms for children were moderated, and all other AOL chat rooms were visited by a moderator at random to try to curb any behavior that might violate the company's terms of service. But AOL's Web site, aol.com, offers additional chat rooms that are open to nonsubscribers, though they must first register as users of AOL instant messaging and provide AOL with their e-mail address. The company does not require participants in those chat rooms to provide an address or credit card number, as Microsoft says it will now do, but those participants are not able to interact with chat rooms on the paid AOL service, Mr. Graham said. He said AOL had no plans to close the Web site chat rooms. The MSN chat feature will continue to be available to paying customers in the United States, Japan, Brazil and Canada, but users must provide a credit card number. Ms. Gurry said Microsoft had already seen a decline in the use of the chat service on MSN in favor of MSN Messenger, an instant messaging service that allows subscribers to chat with people they know. But while Microsoft may have noticed a decline, Yahoo said its chat rooms were still quite popular. In August, MSN's chat rooms had 4.3 million unique visitors, whereas Yahoo's had 11.4 million, according to ComScore Media Metrix, a market research company. AOL's People Connection, which also includes other community features in addition to chat rooms, had 18.5 million unique visitors, ComScore said. Subscribers to MSN, Microsoft's online service, pay $21.95 or more a month for access to the Internet, e-mail, a variety of proprietary content, instant messaging and chat rooms. Of those features, the chat rooms have been open to Internet users who do not subscribe to MSN but get access to the Internet through other services. Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research, said Microsoft acted to give customers a better product, not to reap any additional revenue. But by cleaning up its chat rooms MSN will more easily attract families and children to its service. "They're saying, `We're going to allow the people paying for this service to get the most out of it, without being harassed,' " Mr. Gartenberg said.
Web-based chat rooms are one of the biggest success stories on the Internet. Though better Internet "chat technology" exists, the widespread availability of Web browsers and their ease of use has made Web chatting a remarkable phenomenon. Special CGI programming issues exist when creating chat rooms, including user tracking, maintaining state, and multiple access serving. Chat Rooms-Getting a Life on the InternetI have been living a life on-line in one form or another since 1990, and chat rooms are the reason why. I'm not the only one who has discovered the incredible appeal and even addictive quality of on-line chat rooms. Sysadmins across the world fret and fume about the amount of server activity chat rooms bring. People's lives crumble around them as they fritter away dozens of hours a week within them. Maladjusted misfits taunt other chat room users and maliciously lie for the cheap thrill of hurting other people. Strangers who "meet" in chat rooms often end up spending obscene amounts of money in long-distance phone calls and even plane fare on each other. On balance, chat rooms are fairly destructive creations. And now, I'm going to teach you how to make one. Prescription for a Chat RoomA user's flowchart for how to use a chat room is a fairly simple, feedback-oriented process:
The last step is repeated until you're tired of chatting, likely many hours later. Of course, this procedure is made interesting by the fact that others are doing the same. In the time span between typing in new comments and having your browser reload the chat room following submission of those comments, other people have done the same. Once the reload is done, you get to read what other people have newly typed into the room. This loop of activity can simulate near-real-time "chatting." Figure 19.1 is a quick view of London Chat, one of my chat rooms. Figure 19.1: A view of London Chat room writen by the author. The CGI programmer responsible for a chat room must take into account the cycle I stated previously. An appreciation of the way a chat room is used will lead to a better chat room design. In addition to making the chat room "user-friendly," there are several organization issues that have to be addressed:
These points only scratch the surface of how a chat room should be organized. There are other reasons for the chat room to need to "know" who a given user is than just to save the user the trouble of typing their name in repeatedly. A knowledge of the state of the stack can be used in more ways than just limiting its growth. Time stamps on messages can be used in other ways, as well. Also, it may be useful to allow certain users the capability to enter HTML into their posts while not others. I'll explore these concepts later in this chapter.
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icrosoft's two major competitors in providing Internet services said yesterday that they had no plans to emulate its decision to shut down many free chat rooms in the United States and abroad.
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