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18 June 2005 Please Note: Yahoo! has closed their user created chat rooms, for the full article, click here.
 

13 February 2005 Chatmag News.

Gerald Krien, 26, of Klamath Falls, Oregon, was arrested Wednesday on a charge of solicitation to commit murder. Krien had created a Yahoo! chat room, designed to lure others to commit mass suicide on Valentines Day.

  Krien was taken into custody Thursday, and authorities have been subpoenaing chat logs from Yahoo!, constantly revising the subpoenas to add more chat nicknames to the list.  Yahoo!'s privacy protections for chat users is making the investigation difficult.

  The chat room Krien created has been shut down by Yahoo!, however chatters continue to seek information in several other Yahoo! chat channels, with the general theme of suicides.  In several chat rooms, users have been inquiring about "the pact", referring to the suicide pact by Krien.  In no case has anyone contacted these chatters, to determine if they are involved in "the pact" or are curious after seeing news reports.

  Over the past few years, there have been several online petitions by Yahoo! chatters to Yahoo!, asking that chat rooms be monitored.  Yahoo!, to the best of our knowledge, does not "monitor" chat rooms. There are many Yahoo! chat rooms devoted to pedophiles, yet none of these chat rooms have been closed by Yahoo!, prompting the formation of vigilante anti pedophile groups such as Perverted-Justice.com Complaints regarding an abusive chatter seldom are responded to by Yahoo!.  Those complaints that Yahoo! have responded to generally suggest the user simply "ignore" the offensive chatter.

  Tracking a particular user in Yahoo! chat is difficult, more so than in IRC (Internet Relay Chat), as the users IP cannot be easily found.  Yahoo! should have a method of tracking an online chatter, via their IP number.

  In light of the Krien incident, it is the opinion of Chatmag that Yahoo! will most likely reconsider the continuation of their chat rooms; revamping their chat programs to include monitoring and the ability of identifying a users IP, or eliminating the chat rooms entirely.

-Chatmag News Staff-

Related Link:
Chatmag's Depression and Suicide Chat Room Listings.

Related News Article:
Yahoo! Closes User Created Chat Rooms.
 
 

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