Chatrooms
A chatroom is a website, part of a website or an online service primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing (sometimes even asynchronous conferencing). A chatroom provides communities of Internet users the ability to communicate online in real-time by using diverse online communication technologies such as, real-time online chat, instant messaging, online forums and virtual worlds. The most common is online chat, which is a way of communicating by sending text messages to people in the same chatroom in real-time. Some chatrooms such as Yahoo! use both text and voice simultaneously.
Risks:
- Conversations in chatrooms are usually not monitored and can cover topics that are not appropriate for children.
- Conversations in chatrooms can become sexual in nature and can lead to cybersex activity.
- Child predators, who are interested in contacting young children for sexsual purposes, usually use chatrooms forums, pretending to be at the same age as the child.
- children can give strangers in chatrooms their email or username in IM programs for future communication thinking the stranger is a kid their age, and approve them later on as friends in the IM program. It can lead to a long relationship between the stranger and child, in which the child can be persuaded to engaged in activities that are not suited for his/her age or become a victim to abuse or criminal activity.
- It is possible to leave the public chatroom to a private one allowing two participants to talk privately. Many children can be persuaded to talk privately with a stranger, sometimes a grownup pretending to be a child. The private conversation can be harmful for the child exposing the child to sexual content or scams.
- The child can be persuaded to give up private information that can be used later on for criminal activities or abuse. It is important to instruct children never to give any private information to strangers in chatrooms.