Yahoo announced that their chat rooms will be closed for people aged under eighteen. This was the result after an agreement between Yahoo and New York’s attorney general, Eliot Spitzer. “We need to be vigilant to protect our children,” said Spitzer, motivating his reasons for this agreement.

As part of the agreement Yahoo also closed chat rooms (yes, they are called rooms instead of channels there ) with names like Teen Girls for Older Fat Men, as they would be promoting indecent behavior. According to Spitzer an investigator who entered a chat room as an 14 year old girl got 35 sexual proposals within 25 minutes.

It is believed that the people now cut off from Yahoo will either use false information while signing up, or move to those IRC networks where traditionally little or no moderation takes place at all.