REDMOND. Washington, September 24, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The abuse and corruption of the Internet by email spammers, pornographers and sex predators has led Microsoft to announce Wednesday that it would shut down its Internet chat rooms in 28 countries. The increasing volume of viruses, objectionable unsolicited email (spam), pornography and sexual deviants using the Internet to lure children and others into viewing porn and even into sexual liaisons, has been causing major problems for the entire Internet system. There are even warnings from credible sources that the very survival of the Internet may be at stake if current trends are allowed to continue.
John Dvorak, the renowned columnist with PC Magazine wrote on Sept 9 that “It’s just a matter of time before the Internet is brought to its knees and the majority of the world’s computer systems are trashed. That’s the way I see things happening, unless the Web is redesigned and Microsoft gets rid of various dangerous components”. Chat rooms, file sharing programs such as Kazaa and Newsgroups are known to be notoriously open to dissemination of viruses, porn, lewd messages and much more of the worst material available on the Internet. Most parents are not aware of this. Instant email programs are also increasingly becoming a conduit for these problems. CNET’s News.com reports that “Microsoft says that in those regions where it is shutting down the chat services, the chat was free and unsupervised, giving rise to a nefarious element that bombarded users with spam, much of which was pornographic.” The close-down will take effect on oct. 14.
See CNET News story https://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5081203.html