Moderators and profanity filters running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, will come to Vodafone Australia’s mobile online services in a bid to make it harder for potential pedophiles to abuse the chat rooms.
Promising closer cooperation with the Queensland police force’s Task Force Argos child protection unit, Vodafone said it also planned to unwrap an internal customer complaints apparatus and to push their peers in the mobile industry to push the word about chat room safety through the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, according to reports from the Australian press.
Vodafone’s announcement, in fact, followed Task Force Argos’ announcement that mobile carriers could now be forced to take action themselves to keep the predators out of the mobile chats. Vodafone rooms, according to one report, came under scrutiny a week and a half earlier, when it was reported from New Zealand that men were using the mobile chats to hunt and proposition underage girls.
Vodafone said it would not shut down the mobile chats, claiming they were “pretty harmless,” but an unnamed Vodafone spokesman said October 27 that the company was glad the Queensland police raised the issue anew “because it had highlighted a few things.” But the spokesman also insisted the company doesn’t think there is a real threat – yet.
The issue of pedophilia online has become a particularly sensitive issue in Australia, especially following September’s Operation Auxin’s sweep that netted over 200 child porn suspects. But even before that sweep, NineMSN closed their Australian Internet chats in hand with a worldwide Microsoft crackdown to stop child predators whose activities the software empire believed were bringing the brand into disrepute, according to a published report.
Queensland Police are not commenting beyond certain generalities just yet. "We can't say that [chat rooms] are safe or not safe – obviously we've charged someone,” a police spokesman told a reporter. “All we can say is that we will monitor them and anybody who is concerned is able to contact Queensland police service we will investigate any matters that are raised."
