Internet portal Yahoo! UK has finally recruited an "inspector" charged with responsibility for dealing with paedophile content in its chatrooms.
Annie Mullins, senior policy officer for British children's charity NCH Action for Children, will begin work at Yahoo in May. As the first content inspector ever to be recruited by the portal, her job will be to deal with the unacceptable use of chatrooms by paedophiles to lure children into offline sexual meetings.
"Yahoo is stuffed to the brim with techies - it doesn't need anyone with a technical background," said John Carr, Internet consultant at NCH Action for Children. "Annie comes 100 percent from a child protection and welfare background."
In November, Yahoo's UK managing director Martina King King was adamant that the inspector would not work as a moderator - moderators usually oversee all conversations and deal with swearing, racism and abuse - but would be specially trained to deal only with content of a paedophile nature.
"My understanding is that Annie is initially going to give the whole setup at Yahoo a once-over, and see what procedures need to be put in place," said Carr.
The British Home Office unwittingly revealed Mullins' appointment in a press release announcing the creation of an Internet taskforce, set up to oversee the implementation of recommendations made in the Internet Crime Forum report Chat Wise, Street Wise.
Despite personal reassurance from King in November that ZDNet would be informed on any progress made in finding a suitable person for the role, the company is refusing to discuss the appointment. "It's our prerogative to say whether or not we are going to make this announcement - I don't have any comment," said King.
An investigation by ZDNet News into Yahoo Messenger chatrooms helped to compile alarming evidence that this leading Internet portal is effectively hosting a forum for paedophiles to freely "groom" children online.
Three weeks ago ZDNet provided Yahoo UK with the IDs of 10 customers found to be engaging children in paedophilic conversations on Messenger chat. Two weeks later, Yahoo finally confirmed that action had been taken against some of the offending customers.
