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It is our policy at AFO to block unmoderated
chat rooms. The policy extends to innocuous and Christian
chat rooms.
Some true stories:
A 14 year old girl makes an Internet friend in a chat room
and discovers this other 14 year old girl shares a common
interest in Roller-Blading. After a few months of
dialog they agree to meet in a local park to spend the day
skating. Unfortunately, the "other" girl was not
a girl, it was a guy who kidnapped her and intended to sell
her into sex slavery. She was fortunate to escape two weeks
later to finish living her life in fear and with the most
awful memories. Most kidnap victims are not so fortunate.
A 11 year old boy was also using chat rooms and made friends.
Although he did not agree to meet with anyone, he got very
interested in guns and bomb making through chat rooms and
a year and a half later acted out his frustrations by killing
some fellow classmates at his school.
These are extreme cases, but similar activities happen
every day because of internet chat rooms and we have not
even mentioned the vulgarity, emotional affairs and adultery
perpetrated because of chat rooms.
Our Policy
Our policy at AFO is to block all chat rooms since chat rooms
are the primary vehicle for stalkers, pedophiles, racists
and other people with attack on their minds. The language
is frequently very vulgar. Many deceptions are occurring in
even the most innocent chat rooms. Even the Christian chat
rooms are dangerous because the users (especially children)
are more trusting. In fact, Christian chat rooms are targeted
by many predators.
Although your favorite chat room may appear to be safe now,
there is just no way for us to know which chat rooms are safe
and which are not safe. Too many lives have been destroyed
for us to allow this service to continue uncontrolled.
Hope for the future
AFO.net is open to modifying our policy as technology develops
and allows us to provide better protection for chat rooms.
But for now, our policy has to be blocking chat rooms until
they become safer.
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