Sexual Predators Cause Yahoo to Close Chat Rooms

After a television news report about chat rooms being used by adults to influence minors to have sex with them, Yahoo has put a stop to allowing users to set up their own chat rooms. ''We began implementing the changes to Yahoo Chat user rooms in the past week," said Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako. ''We are working on improvements to enhance the user experience in compliance with our terms of service." For now, users will only be able to chat in rooms that Yahoo itself has set up and maintains. Yahoo said that the personal chat rooms will be available at some point, once they can control them better. Some of the chat rooms that were shut down were called things like "Girls 13 and Under for Older Guys" and "Younger Girls for Older Guys" said the TV report. Hiawatha Bray with the Boston Globe latest ebusiness news