Russian’s roulette creates new networking danger

THE explosion in social networking technology has thrown up many anxieties for parents fearful of who is trying to interact with their child and what images are being thrust before them.

The threat of grooming and exploitation through such websites as Facebook and Bebo has been well documented and whole swathes of technology have been rolled out to try to address the problem.

However, thanks to a 17-year-old youth and his PC, a new social networking phenomenon was unleashed upon the world at the end of last year.

At first, few people knew about it, but word spread rapidly and within little over six months, chatroulette.com has attracted tens of millions of users who, in the space of 20 seconds, can have separate interactions with as many as 10 different people.

Russian schoolboy Andrey Ternovskiy developed the site after realising there was no location on the internet which allowed random video chats with strangers. With coding expertise taught to him by his father, he initially created chatroulette for “fun” and to connect randomly with global users.

From his home in Moscow he developed a site, hosted from servers in Germany, on which anyone with a PC and a webcam could meet strangers.

Initially it had 500 visitors per day. Now that number has swelled to well over 50,000, mainly from the US, but also from Britain, France and increasingly from Ireland.

The website uses peer-to -peer network capabilities, allowing almost all video and audio streams to travel directly between user computers, without using server bandwidth.

Accessing the site is ridiculously easy. The user merely types in chatroulette.com, clicks “accept” to allow their camera to be enabled and that is it. Within seconds they will be looking at a random person in some other part of the globe.

If they do not like what they see, they simply “next” the person and that live footage will disappear, to be replaced by another.

In today’s world of hi- spec website design, the site appears almost archaic. Two screen portals, one showing the user, the other the camera footage from the other camera, occupy a large portion of the screen. Apart from that the only other features of note are the “next” “report” and bizarrely entitled “dating” buttons.

There is little attempt to ensure users are above the recommended minimum age of 16 and, it would appear, little attempt to moderate the activity of those displaying themselves online.

That has opened up the floodgates for those wanting to use the site for pornographic gratification.

It is almost certain that within 10 “nexts” everyuser logging ontochatroulette.com will encounter the sight of a man masturbating. Some will have their faces obscured, others do not care if they are identifiable.

The extent of this usage is evidenced by the fact that, while social networking is equally, if not more prevalent among girls and women, up to 90% of the users of chatroulette.com are male.

In fact, one survey found that a user is more likely to encounter a webcam featuring no person at all than one featuring a solo female.

The fact is that any child logging on will see gratuitous and graphic (mainly) male nudity within minutes of logging on. Yet this is a website that is mainly targeted at young users.

Ternovskiy has implemented a “report offensive content” option which freezes a session for 40 minutes if three people report something amiss within five minutes. However, given the percentage of indecent behaviour appearing on the site, it would appear few are choosing to avail of that option.

Advocates of chatroulette, and there are many, see it as the next big horizon in social networking. There are charming stories, such as that identified by the BBC, of emerging characters like the “piano man” who improvises songs to the chat buddies that he encounters.

There’s also the thrill of a potential brush with a celebrity – pop star Katy Perry has said in the past that she is a fan of the site. Rock band Faith No More even broadcast a whole concert on the site.

Opponents, and there are many more, are fearful of the material young people are, literally, exposed to.

One website has taken it upon itself to publicly identify those using the site.

Using a facility similar to Google Maps, it is able to use the person’s IP address to pinpoint their location and will also display a screen-shot of the person. A number of people in Ireland are clearly identifiable on the chatroulettemap site.

The future for chatroulette, which is now considered to be worth millions of euro, is unclear.

But in the absence of greater regulation, the only advice for parents is to pay close attention to what their children are doing online.