Pedophiles use Skype 'loophole' to woo children

[ironmom]

INTERNET chatrooms run by Skype, the online telephone giant, have become a magnet for pedophiles and sexual predators who want to groom children as young as 10 for sex, an investigation has found.

The software, which enables users to make free phone calls and also "chat" by typing messages while online, has become the preferred method for many pedophiles to find their victims.

Other internet chat facilities have strengthened their child protection measures or closed down entirely because of concerns over internet "grooming".

Skype, which was bought two years ago by eBay, the online auction site, for £1.3 billion and has nearly 200m users worldwide, has been accused of leaving under16s vulnerable to abuse. It was contacted last week by concerned Metropolitan police child protection officers.

During a two-week investigation, Sunday Times undercover reporters posed online as children aged between 10 and 14. They were bombarded with sexually overt messages from adult men in Britain and overseas who wanted to meet the children and asked them for pornographic images of themselves.

One, a 50-year-old professional and father of two from southern England, arranged to meet a reporter who he believed to be a girl aged 14 from West Sussex. He turned up at a railway station near to his home on Friday after arranging to take her to his home to "watch a video".

The man, who had also said that he thought the girl's clothing would "look great on my bedroom floor", greeted a reporter who he believed to be the 14-year-old by draping his arm across her shoulders.

Another man, a 33-year-old supervisor for a home counties company and a father of one, attempted to get a reporter masquerading online as a 13-year-old girl to send him lewd pictures of herself and to attend a pornographic photo shoot at a friend's "mansion".

A third man, a 32-year-old engineer based in northeast Scotland, took delight in ordering a "13-year-old girl" to engage in a sex act online. He also told her to buy "sexy" underwear, boasted that he had just bedded a 16-year-old and became aggressive when his commands were questioned.

It is illegal for an adult to meet a child following "sexual grooming" over the internet and it is also an offense to ask a child to become involved in pornography.

The Sunday Times has decided not to identify the men after fears were expressed for their safety.

Michele Elliott, director of Kid-scape, the child protection group, said: "The Sunday Times has uncovered not only a loophole, it has uncovered where the pedophiles are going when they are being blocked at other places. What's Skype going to do about it?

"We know that pedophiles will use anything they can to get in contact with children. There are no checks and you've proven that it is so brilliantly easy."

Skype differs from many other chat facilities because it is run on a system known as "peer-to-peer". This means individuals communicate directly with each other instead of being hosted through a central server that can be scrutinized by moderators.

It takes just a few minutes to download Skype's free software and enter the chatroom. The only apparent warning to children is a single sentence found in an obscure corner of the site: "If your children are using Skype, educate them about the threats of communicating with strangers."

By contrast, children using the Yahoo! chatroom, a centrally hosted service, encounter clear warnings throughout the registration procedure and, once enabled, can communicate only with others of the same age group.

A panic button alerts the service provider to abusive messaging and the chatrooms are "patrolled" by volunteers approved by Yahoo! who are known as "navigators".

On Skype, users have only to create a "profile" with optional details of their age and then place themselves online. Other users from around the world can then send messages and call.

The profiles created by The Sunday Times, which made clear the girls' ages and little else, proved irresistible to sexual predators.

For full story, go to: Paedophiles use Skype ‘loophole’ to woo children - Times Online