Important security info

[chrishoggy]

As some of you may know I do some IT work for local schools and I'm passing this info on to keep kids safe on the net.
My 9 year old son has Internet on his laptop, and I only allow him access while he is downstairs where I can see what he's doing. I also have content restrictions, as well as site and IP blocking. A few days back I caught him looking at a kids chat site, and it was an address I know to be not so good. So I asked him about it, and he told me quite a few of the kids at school go on it. This sent alarm bells ringing in my head, so I logged on to the site to check it out. Well what I found was a site full of 18+ adults acting as children, or 18+ adults openly requesting contact with under 16's. I have now found out that at least one 10 year old child from his school has been giving out her info and msn contact on this site, and it seems many others are now being found. Letters are now going out to all parents of local schools, so I'm spreading the word where I can.
The site is:

W w W.c H a T-a V e N u E.c o m

I've put this in a code box and put spaces etc in the address so RP doesn't get the url picked up by any search engines.
PLEASE add this to your blocked site lists, or what ever you use to block content. Also spread the word as far as you can, as this site needs shutting down.

[CJ Swartz]

NBC television has a current on-going series about adult sex-predators seeking out under-age chat-room visitors. The show works with police and a private group that poses as children to test how far the predators will go -- often leading to the arrest of men who schedule visits to the homes of these "children" and show up to be met by the NBC cameras and law-enforcement officials from that area. It appears that there are numerous chat-rooms where adults and children/teens can meet to talk -- the show reads some of the chat-logs to the alleged predator when he arrives (he always says he wasn't going to "do" anything), and the men often tell their real age.

In the U.K., are the chat-rooms supposed to be grouped by age? How do you know that some older people are acting as children, and how is the age grouping done? Just in general terms -- I don't want to take the thread off course, but I'm interested in how different countries might be handling this problem differently than the U.S. I haven't been in a chat-room since the AOL days, except to visit my nephew's MySpace pages -- I guess that is considered a chat room also? It is really creepy to know that a stranger can potentially be toying with your child while he/she is "safe in your own home".

[chrishoggy]

There are a number of UK private individuals that work with the police to track these people, so it sounds like they are doing the same as in the US.
I watched the "Kids" chat room for about 45 mins last night, just to see what went on. You can tell roughly from the way a person acts/types messages in a chat room how old they are, but not all the time. What shocked me more than anything was the fact they were not hiding their age Their chat room name would be something like "M22 4fun" and messages like "Male 22 looking for early teens PM me" Now I signed in with the name QWERTY and had PM's from grown men asking for MSN address for online *** (you know what) , and I didn't give an age or sex in the profile. I never typed anything in to the chat room, just sat and watched. The other messages I watched flying around in the chat room were not repeatable on here, so you can imagine what they were. The kids chat on that site is for 11-16 year olds, and is supposed to be monitored for "groomers" as we call them (perverts). If you google "kids chat" or "teen Chat" this site is the first on the list.

[Photo678]

who the hell starts these sites/lets these sites exist is what I want to know....I am all for freedom on the internet, but certainly not at the expense of the kids.......this is getting ridiculous and someone needs to do something. We need a law or something that states that if a website starts a chat room, they are under law, obligated to monitor/restrict/verify the ages of it's participants.

makes me sick

EDIT: good for you chris for being that kind of parent that stays on top of this stuff....bravo!

[palms1]

Thank you Chris, i will let family /friends with kids know this address and tell of your experience there,

Palms

[chrishoggy]

I know how easy it is for people to be traced over the net, as I can do it myself. I've tracked people for abuse on forums that I'm a member of, and it's not rocket science. So my kids are watched like hawks when they are on the internet. They only need to give out little snippets of info here and there, but it can all be put together to find there home address in no time. The problems come when the parents don't realise how bad the net can be, until it's too late.

Well if anybody feels they want to complain about this site, here is their contact details and hosting company.

Site server IP: 69.16.237.92
Address: Ass given in post above, in code box
Additional address:

free - chat - rooms . net

again, remove the spaces.
The contact address for the owners of this site is

5899 Leslie Street
Dexter P.O.
P.O. Box 23535
Toronto, Ontario M2H3R9
CA
1-416-465-5025

Site is hosted by:
Liquid Web, Inc.
4210 Creyts Rd.
Lansing, MI
US
http://www.liquidweb.com/
ipadmin@liquidweb.com
+1-800-580-4985

I will be reporting the site to the local authorities both here and Toronto, so the more people that do the same, the more chance there is of us getting this rubbish of the net

[videosean]

Originally Posted by Photo678

this is getting ridiculous and someone needs to do something.

I'd rather 'the people' take action than some government or other elected body or whatever.
By posting this info everyone here can pass it along to everyone they know that cares Thanks Chris!

[Gary Richardson]

For those wishing to block the address Chris supplied, try the following.

• Click Start > Run then type Notepad click OK.
• This will open a Notepad file.
• Click File > Open and browse to the following (for Windows XP) C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts (note you'll need to set Files of type to All Files to see the hosts file).
• This will open your Hosts file.
• Type the following into it. 127.0.0.1 W w W.c H a T-a V e N u E.c o m (note: web address has been altered here for the reasons Chris stated, type the proper address when you make this entry to your hosts file).
• Click File > Save and exit out of Notepad.

This will have added the site to your Hosts file, and set it to Loopback, so if you try to contact that address you will get a site unobtainable message.

There's an easier way.

Download HostsXpert 3.7 and unzip it to your computer, somewhere where you can find it.

This is a Hosts editor, and makes adding entries much simpler (I'll leave you to work out how to do it, it's pretty self evident) (Hint, click on the + button).

Set to Make hosts Read Only when you finish.


There are of course other ways to block the address.

[smak]

>>>>> I know how easy it is for people to be traced over the net

Can you identify me from this forum? Just curious.

[Gary Richardson]

There are tools that allow that, however you'd need administrative access to the forum software to use them (in some forums this function is inbuilt).

Someone who is just posting here would not be able to track you, other than by any clues you may give to your whereabouts.

It is of course possible that someone could hack into the Forum software, but that would be quite an involved process, I think you'd have to annoy someone quite a lot for them to put in that degree of effort (even if they had the ability).

If you're really worried about being tracked, you can operate through a proxy to obfuscate your trail.

[chrishoggy]

Like Gary said, the forum stores info on you when you post etc, and this is the starting point for forum owners/mods. Forum mods and admins usually have access to this info, as well as tools that can trace people. Using simple methods, I could get some of that info without hacking or anything. Just asking you to click on a simple link would give me your IP, location, ISP, browser, OS and what ever else. Then it's just a matter of time checking out the info, and cross referencing it. There is no illegal hacking, emailing, or downloading of exe files that would track you. Just simple internet tools and time looking.

The people that pray on kids on the net, spend time building up a profile of the child (grooming them). They gather little snippets of info here and there, and prompt them for more. Then when they have enough info, they make their move. I know of many kids that put a photo of themselves on an MSN profile, as well as their location. This is just an open invitation to the filth that roam the net.

PS: You have already told this forum your rough location, plus given clues that could narrow that area down. And that's in just 3 posts and no searching.

[chrishoggy]

Just an update:
I have now contacted a local TV news studio, and they are interested in the story and the info on the site (YTV studios in Leeds) I'm hoping they will run with this story, and get this info broadcast on local news, as it may be picked up by national news etc. Will let you know if I hear anything