Chatroom ban not enough to stop abusers, says expert

MICROSOFT’S decision to close all chatrooms run through its MSN service will only marginally impact on paedophilia using the internet.

The warning came yesterday from an expert on child abuse, Professor Maxwell Taylor, who insisted the distribution of pornographic images continued to pose a greater risk than chatrooms.

As Britain, in particular, prepares legislation to criminalise the online grooming of youngsters for sex abuse, Geoff Sutton, Europe’s general manager of Microsoft MSN, conceded that chatrooms had become more sinister. He said that over the past year or so, they had become increasingly seedy, increasingly dangerous and, for parents, increasingly worrying.