Dharmagirl recently wrote an article dealing with her experience investigating online pedophiles in the Yahoo! chat rooms. I made a comment about the AOL version of this but I thought it warranted an article all it's own.
AOL has been attempting to turn around its flagging fortunes by promoting itself as "the kid-safe internet provider". To this end it has many parent customizable features like the ability to turn of Instant Messaging, not allowing email with files or pictures, disallowing chat room access, draconian web page filters, and the like... of course when you take a look at the above list you realize very quickly that if a parent actually used all of these simultaneously on their child’s account then the child would not actually have Internet access. Parents realize this too (right after their child logs on and complains that they are blocked from doing *everything), so they usually leave some of these features enabled. Most of the time parents at least leave the email function enabled but perhaps without the ability to receive files or pictures in them. After a few months of this the child quickly tires of email's novelty and wants to be able to chat with their friends in near real-time via the now ubiquitous IM service or in chat rooms.
Since these activities are obviously rather open-ended AOL has started a service to appeal to parents fears and ignorance. Enter AOL's Kid's Only areas. This area has thins like links to coca-cola animations, the newest Harry Potter news, and other "web-like" content that is supposed to appeal to kids. The *real* appeal for kids here are actually the Kids Only chat rooms. For the kids without the ability to send or receive IM's these rooms provide a method of near real time comms with their friends and with other kids they have not met yet. For kids with IM access they provide the same function with the added ability to converse privately one-on-one with others.
The bright amongst you will already have alarm bells ringing in your heads. This "service" actually just herds all the kids of a given age group (according to AOL 9-14 year olds) into one easily defined cyber-space. Additionally parents are lulled into a false sense of security here. After all it is "Kids Only" right? That means they don't have to read over their kids shoulder! Who wants to read 30 minutes of adolescent chat about Hillary Duff anyway? So off they go leaving their kids to chat in the safety of Kids Only. This also adds to the kid’s own natural level of gullibility. They are led to believe by the service that only kids can chat there so they will breathlessly assume that whatever line of bullshit the pedo feeds them about being their age is the gospel truth. The danger in this area is palpable.
The even darker side of this marketing ploy is it's unsubtle appeal to the pedophile demographic. AOL aggressively pushes ads regarding "KOL" to *every* account holder regardless of age or access (even to AOL instant messenger users who cannot get to KOL unless they have a paid account). AOL wants the pedophile "community to know about this area so that they will purchase AOL accounts. KOL is effectively a corral of sheep waiting for pedos to pick them off. There is no mechanism in place, (nor is one likely to ever be emplaced) to verify that the account signing in to a KOL chat room is actually a kid. Thus the wolves prowl unopposed.
The bottom line is that if a child is using AOL's Kids Only service then they are likely being chatted up by a pedophile every minute of every hour they are logged on. As you can see from some of the anti-pedo sites on the web some of these folks are very patient and will wait building a relationship online with a child for months or even years before victimizing them. Be afraid and under *no* circumstances should any parent *ever* allow their child access to a chat room or IM services without reading over their shoulder or having a keyboard logger installed to read the logs afterwards. You can *not* afford the risk.