Yahoo Chat Rooms: You Must Be Over 18 Now

Found on Aunty Spam on Wednesday, 12 October 2005
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Yahoo chat rooms are being closed to anyone under 18. That's an announcement made today under an agreement between Yahoo and the New York State attorney general's office.

Both the state of New York and the state of Nebraska started investigations earlier this year after reports of children having unrestricted access to adult chat rooms, making children easy prey for adults of a certain persuasion. Mr. Spitzer's office told of an investigator who posed as a 14-year old girl in the Yahoo Chat area, and received 35 sexually explicit messages within 25 minutes.

According to a Yahoo spokesperson, "Yahoo is taking further steps to enhance user safety by restricting Yahoo Chat to users 18 and older and removing the Teen category. Yahoo will continue to strongly support law enforcement in their work, as well as continue to provide support for several nonprofit organizations committed to online safety."

So, all you need to do is lie about your age when you sign up for a Yahoo account? Isn't that what pretty much everybody already does? Old men sign up as young girls, and young girls sign up as adult women. That stunt from Yahoo is nothing more than a PR gag.