INTERNET companies including Yahoo! are hindering police investigations into child abuse by closing down the undercover identities used by officers to trap paedophiles.

British child protection police habitually pose as children online, using false profiles to ensnare abusers trying to groom girls and boys for sex.

But the companies say they will shut down all bogus identities on their sites even if they know they are being run to catch paedophiles.

“Everybody using our service, regardless of whether they are law enforcement agencies, has to abide by our terms of service and if they don’t we will close them down,” said Yahoo!.

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Its terms of service state that all information used to make up a profile must be “true, accurate current and complete”.

The stipulations are intended to protect users from exploitation and abuse, but antiabuse campaigners say they are frustrating police sting operations on hardcore offenders.

Detective Inspector Brian Ward, who runs the high-tech division of the Metropolitan police’s child abuse investigation command, said there had been occasions when the lack of cooperation had been “enormously frustrating”.

As a result, Yahoo! was not informed of undercover operations. Even so, the company had shut down officers’ profiles after apparently becoming suspicious about whether they were genuine.

“If you breach Yahoo!’s terms and conditions they pull the plug,” Ward said. “They are not alone in not giving the police special dispensation.”

He added that, by contrast, some companies, such as Bebo and MySpace, owned by News Corporation, ultimate owner of The Sunday Times, had recently become more helpful.

“Up to about six months ago we didn’t get any help covertly but now they are falling over themselves, probably because they realise there are more benefits from cooperating than failing to cooperate with law enforcement.

“Yahoo! at the moment don’t enter into that negotiation, they say ‘that’s contrary to our terms and conditions’ and immediately pull it.”

Ward added that despite the reluctance to allow covert operations on its sites Yahoo! was otherwise helpful to the police when it noticed potential online abuse and cooperated with requests for computer records.

Michele Elliott, director of Kidscape, the child protection group, called the refusal to allow undercover operations “absolutely ridiculous”.

Yahoo! said it takes child protection seriously and is an active member of the Internet Watch Foundation, which aims to identify online abuse. A 50-year-old father of two young children has been arrested over allegations that he used the messaging software Skype to try to groom children for sex.

The man was arrested last Monday by Hampshire police on suspicion of attempted child abduction and attempted grooming and released on police bail.

Two weeks ago The Sunday Times revealed sexual predators were using Skype, which allows free messaging and phone calls, to target children.

The arrested man, a professional, met a reporter he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. He told her he wanted to take her to his home to “watch a video” and said her clothes would “look great on my bedroom floor”.

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