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Microsoft Puts Police Link on Messenger
SirClicksalot writes "Microsoft is working together with the UK Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre to help protect Windows Live Messenger Users. UK users will be able to report suspected sexual predators directly to the police. From the article: 'Microsoft will add a "report abuse" icon to Messenger that will link any users worried about their anonymous internet buddies directly to online police services. Set up earlier this year to provide a single point of contact for the public, law enforcers and the communications industry to report the targeting of children online, CEOP offers advice and information to parents and potential victims of abuse and works with police forces around the world to protect children.'"
Microsoft is working together with the UK Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre to help protect Windows Live Messenger Users. UK users will be able to report suspected sexual predators directly to the police.
Oh yeah, I can't see this being abused at all. Especially by teenagers just screwing around.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
One of the most convenient ways of destroying someone's life forever is to hint that they're a pedd-o to the police. One of the least credible sources of information is through chat and blog and instant message internet services. This sounds like a great way to completely twist the whole of society tightly around the axle for years to come.
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Microsoft and everyone else has more important things to do than build 'predator features' into their software.
Anybody else greatly reminded of the Warning feature on AIM? No, people aren't going to screw around with this at all, everybody will be fair and sensible and only use it when justified.
Some people here have been saying "what about the abuse" well seeing as they will know who is reporting the abuse then if you are just pratting about then those same police who are looking for predators can also send a threating response for wasting police time (a punishable offence). Unlike making crank calls from a telephone box this is very traceable.
Good idea, and well done Microsoft.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
... is that it's the poor police who'll be feeling abused.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Because M$ could send them your ip as well. If they keep any kind of logs of which IP you generally access MSN from, they could do at least as good of a job as the RIAA does (lucky you). Unless you always use a good proxy, there is a pretty good chance they could figure out who you are, if they tried.
We already have ways of reporting pedophiles. You can pick up the phone, you can write a letter, or you can walk into a police station. It doesn't need to be made any easier. Why don't people do this? Because their confidence in the police is low. They think the police either won't act for lack of evidence(in which case it can be a waste of time or worse the police might acuse them of making the situation up), or the police may over-react to information given and you could ruin someone's life based on a vague suspicion.
What you need to do is increase confidence in the police by making sure they always respond appropriately to legitimate complaints. Adding a "report a pedo" form is just plain silly.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
So now you can rat out anyone you feel like, even when they do nothing wrong just beacuse you are an ass.
Bring down the man on them.. Good way to scare away users.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This will be heavily abused by kids just messing with each other. Yeah, no one would ever click this button as a joke on their friend. Without some sort of punishment for abuse of the system by the submitter this will work the same as blanket phone wiretaps - simply increase the size of the haystack in which one is searching for a needle.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
The people who are really being abused probably aren't going to report it. If they are happy to just push a button to make it stop, why don't they just sign out or block the person?
Aren't the worst cases of abuse when the target is manipulated by the abuser, so they will willing go along with it? Isn't that they -only- way someone on the interent could physically get in contact with the target for abuse? I don't see how this will stop that or even help prevent that at all.
I think that this is a horrible idea that can only serve to weaken online privacy (what little there is left), security (these days being secure to me means being protected from harassment or worse from the police state as much as being protected from normal criminals).
I think that everyone who has said that this will be abused by idiots and kids is right, for the most part - but my real problem is that this is a first step to eroding anonymity (or semi-anonymity) online, because once that button has been there for a little while, then the authorities can say - "Well, we now need every IP to be verifiably tied to an ID because online police buttons might be pushed and we can't go throught trying to figure out who all of these sceennames are."
Another reason people don't file police reports for this sort of thing are all the technical barriers that must be overcome: the complainant has to provide contextual information, at least including the time the incident occurred and who was involved. The police would then traditionally have to obtain warrants, contact AOL or MSN or whoever and pull IP logs, then do the same with the respective ISPs to get names and addresses. And if there is no reliable log of the conversation then the accused can deny the conversation ever took place.
With this service, I would expect MSN to forward aliases, a full chat log with accurate timestamps, the IP addresses of the involved parties, profile information, and anything else MSN may have on record. This eliminates the need for diligence on the part of the complainant and a good bit of footwork for the police handling the issue. And so long as the interface is designed properly, I think the chance of accidental or fake reports to be quite low (not considering worms that may target the feature).
All in all I think this is a fairly decent feature to add to a commercial chat client. If nothing else, it will likely be better than what we have now--ie. nothing.
Yep, I bet we'll have a 'Report as Terrorist' icon soon too. And we know how lax the definition of 'terrorism' is in the Terrorism Act here in the UK.