INTERNET chatrooms run by Skype, the online telephone giant, have become a
magnet for paedophiles and sexual predators who want to groom children as
young as 10 for sex, an investigation has found.
The software, which enables users to make free phone calls and also “chat” by
typing messages while online, has become the preferred method for many
paedophiles to find their victims.
Other internet chat facilities have strengthened their child protection
measures or closed down entirely because of concerns over internet
“grooming”.
Skype, which was bought two years ago by eBay, the online auction site, for
£1.3 billion and has nearly 200m users worldwide, has been accused of
leaving under16s vulnerable to abuse. It was contacted last week by
concerned Metropolitan police child protection officers.
During a two-week investigation, Sunday Times undercover reporters posed
online as children aged between 10 and 14. They were bombarded with sexually
overt messages from adult men in Britain and overseas who wanted to meet the
children and asked them for pornographic images of themselves.
One, a 50-year-old professional and father of two from southern England,
arranged to meet a reporter who he believed to be a girl aged 14 from West
Sussex. He turned up at a railway station near to his home on Friday after
arranging to take her to his home to “watch a video”.
The man, who had also said that he thought the girl’s clothing would “look
great on my bedroom floor”, greeted a reporter who he believed to be the
14-year-old by draping his arm across her shoulders.
Another man, a 33-year-old supervisor for a home counties company and a father
of one, attempted to get a reporter masquerading online as a 13-year-old
girl to send him lewd pictures of herself and to attend a pornographic photo
shoot at a friend’s “mansion”.
A third man, a 32-year-old engineer based in northeast Scotland, took delight
in ordering a “13-year-old girl” to engage in a sex act online. He also told
her to buy “sexy” underwear, boasted that he had just bedded a 16-year-old
and became aggressive when his commands were questioned.
It is illegal for an adult to meet a child following “sexual grooming” over
the internet and it is also an offence to ask a child to become involved in
pornography.
The Sunday Times has decided not to identify the men after fears were
expressed for their safety.
Michele Elliott, director of Kid-scape, the child protection group, said: “The
Sunday Times has uncovered not only a loophole, it has uncovered where the
paedophiles are going when they are being blocked at other places. What’s
Skype going to do about it?
“We know that paedophiles will use anything they can to get in contact with
children. There are no checks and you’ve proven that it is so brilliantly
easy.”
Skype differs from many other chat facilities because it is run on a system
known as “peer-to-peer”. This means individuals communicate directly with
each other instead of being hosted through a central server that can be
scrutinised by moderators.
It takes just a few minutes to download Skype’s free software and enter the
chatroom. The only apparent warning to children is a single sentence found
in an obscure corner of the site: “If your children are using Skype, educate
them about the threats of communicating with strangers.”
By contrast, children using the Yahoo! chatroom, a centrally hosted service,
encounter clear warnings throughout the registration procedure and, once
enabled, can communicate only with others of the same age group.
A panic button alerts the service provider to abusive messaging and the
chatrooms are “patrolled” by volunteers approved by Yahoo! who are known as
“navigators”.
On Skype, users have only to create a “profile” with optional details of their
age and then place themselves online. Other users from around the world can
then send messages and call.
The profiles created by The Sunday Times, which made clear the girls’ ages and
little else, proved irresistible to sexual predators.
The 50-year-old professional messaged an undercover reporter posing as a
14-year-old named Anne, asking what she liked to do at night. He asked her
if she was really 14 and, when told that she was, he suggested: “Well, if
you ever get up this way, I could take you clubbing.”
He then suggested a rendezvous and gave “Anne” his mobile number. In a
subsequent telephone call he arranged to pick her up from the train station
on Friday morning.
“I can take you home so to speak and we can sit and watch a video or something
like that if you like?” he said, adding that he also had the latest James
Bond film.
“How you going to work this with your mum, that’s what I want to know?” he
added. When “Anne” said she did not know, he said: “What she doesn’t know,
she won’t worry about.”
Later on he sent the “girl” a text saying: “See u tomorrow at station 10am. I
am not going to get arrested by pc if I turn up am I?”
When the girl suggested that she did not understand the text, the man seemed
reassured.
The next day he appeared at the station half an hour early, looking agitated.
After approaching the person he believed to be “Anne”, he was confronted by
reporters. He said he had intended to make further checks on her age after
meeting her, although he did not explain how.
The man added that he had been behaving strangely lately “because of a recent
bereavement” and vowed never to contact children again.
A second man, the 33-year-old supervisor, contacted “Lucy” from Cheshire whose
Skype profile described her as “14 soon”, and quickly asked if she was a
virgin and if she would perform various sex acts.
“So if your [sic] only 14 have you had sex before?” he asked. When “Lucy” said
she had not, the man steered the conversation towards her sending him
pornographic pictures of herself.
“I can help [you be a model] but I need to see your body naked,” he messaged.
The man also sent her messages from his work e-mail account and texts. “Just
watch out for the perverts on Skype ok?” he added.
In a subsequent telephone call he said he had a friend with “a mansion” where
he could take her for a photographic session. “If you want to start doing
stuff we’ll have to start thinking about arrangements, when you’re
available, cause obviously you’re at school and stuff like that, so maybe a
weekend thing for you?” he said.
He then suggested she send him a package of graphic pictures to his work
address. “Obviously put [them] for the attention of myself yeah? Else my
boss will open them probably.”
When confronted, the man, who also contacted another underage profile set up
by The Sunday Times, said: “If she was 14 or not I didn’t know that. I
genuinely misunderstood. I’m not interested in talking to a 14-year-old.
I’ve got my own kid, do you know what I mean?”
A third man, the 32-year-old from Scotland, who spent a long time messaging
“Lucy” urging her to masturbate online, said when confronted: “This isn’t
going to end well, is it? I haven’t really got a defence. It was a mistake.
I wouldn’t even have to think twice before doing it again. I just wouldn’t
do it.”
Kurt Sauer, Skype’s chief security officer, said: “This raises some very
practical issues. However, we have not found a way to address each of the
issues.”
Easy connection
Skype customers make free international telephone calls to other users and
message each other via the internet, writes Daniel Foggo.
Skype. masterminded five years ago by the entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and
Janus Friis, was sold for £1.3 billion in 2005 and now has more than 196m
users in 200 countries. The software has been downloaded 500m times.
Although calls between computers are free, connections to landlines and mobile
phones must be paid for with credits bought online.
Computer-to-computer connections, known as peer-to-peer, enable users to see
each other on webcams and to key in messages that are transferred instantly.
The technology encrypts the messages, providing privacy for users and their
personal details. There is no way of monitoring the chat.
