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Yahoo Closes Chat Rooms to Anyone Under 18
Talaria writes "Yahoo has announced that they are closing all of their chat rooms to anyone under eighteen, following an agreement with New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer, who began investigating the Yahoo! chat situation earlier this year, said "We need to be vigilant to protect our children.""
The first link to aunty-spam.com is very misleading. The link to the AG's site is the proverbial "horse's mouth." Here is what really happened: Mr. Spitzer & Yahoo have reached an agreement where Yahoo will close down all chatrooms that promote sexual relations between minors and adults. So in other words, if there was a chat room called "pre-teen hook-ups with older men 50+" or whatever, Yahoo will shut it down.
Again, minors are still allowed on Yahoo. However, Yahoo is clamping down on certain chatrooms that do not have honorable intentions.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
See here: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/chat/chat-15.html
"Why did Yahoo! remove the ability for users under 18 to access Yahoo! Chat and remove the "Teen" category in Yahoo! Chat? We are removing the Teen category and making Yahoo! Chat available to users 18 or older in order to improve the user experience and compliance with our Terms of Service."
My reading of this is that Yahoo! accounts set up by minors will not (at this time) be able to access Yahoo! Chat at all. Keep in mind that Yahoo! has a great many more properties than their Chat so minors will still have access to other areas. However, a minor can still use their parent's account (which seems to be allowed according to the rules) or conceivably lie about their age (which would certainly constitute a breach of contract). Either might absolve Yahoo! of liability, which is certainly all they're concerned about.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Here's an earlier report about Yahoo and MSN merges IMs
And here's a story about a nobody talking smack about Linux IM clients.
Both topics are chock full of MSN IM astro-turfing goodness. Check it out. Looks like the start of a marketing campaign for MSN Messenger 7.
C'mon everyone, read the (second) linked article:
"Under the agreement, one of the nation's leading internet service providers, Yahoo!, has removed and barred the posting of user-created chat rooms with names that promoted sex between minors and adults"
No, not all chatrooms... No, not all minors...
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?