Safe use of mobile chat rooms

Mobile phone chat rooms are enjoyable places where children can learn social skills and interact with others. Unfortunately, there are also a number of risks associated with them.

There may be occasions when young people come into contact with other chat room users who behave in a negative way. These include bullies, who engage in abusive, threatening or harassing behaviour, and other young people and adults who try to get personal contact details with a view towards meeting in the real world. Such young people and adults may begin a process of manipulation known as grooming, which involves befriending a young person and developing a relationship with them, until the young person feels confident enough or pressured into meeting up. In extreme cases, this can lead to sexual abuse.

Making our chat rooms a safer environment

We're working hard to make the internet a safer place for children. We have separate chat rooms for under-18s and over-18s, so that we can better moderate the services used by our under-18 customers. We regularly moderat our public chat rooms and check all public user profiles, text messages, pictures and audio files to make sure they are appropriate and safe.

Although we moderate our public chat rooms, some private forums are not controlled in this way. Young people should always take care when using a private chat room, which is a one-to-one chat that may be used by an adult looking to befriend or meet a young person.

Worried about the safety of a chat room?

If your children ever feel uneasy about what's going on in a chat room, they should follow these steps:

• Tell a parent, a teacher or a trusted adult immediately
• Report any abuse to the police
• Report what happened to us by calling customer service on 0870 521 4000
• Contact the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre at www.ceop.gov.uk

Talking to young people about online safety

You don't have to understand the technical ins and outs of the internet to be able to protect your children when they are using their phone to go online. You just need to be able to talk to them about internet safety with respect to 'chat friends' and reassure them that they can be open about it. We think it's a good idea for you and your child to agree some tips on how to safely use their phone before they get started. That way, you can feel more relaxed when they're accessing the internet.

Some young people are afraid to tell their parents about any negative online experiences they have, because they think will have their internet access stopped or their mobile confiscated. So it's very important to make sure your children know they can be honest to you about all of their online experiences, whether good or bad.

Here's a list of things you might like to remind your children about when they are online:

• Try to make sure that your online friends are genuine and keep away from chatters who are sometimes dishonest. Have they claimed to be 14 years old one day and 18 years old the next, for example?
• People in chat rooms sometimes ask personal questions. You don't have to give chat friends any information that you're not happy to pass on.
• It's especially important that you don't give out your mobile number or your address or any details about your school. You would not share this information with a stranger on the street. It's better to be vague by saying, "I live in the UK", rather than saying the name of the place you live.
• If you are thinking about posting a picture of yourself, it is important to consider the type of picture and the kind of attention it might attract. Also be aware that photos can easily be copied, changed and used elsewhere, and can potentially stay online for ever.
• There's no need to keep friendships secret. If somebody asks you to keep an online friendship secret, you should tell an adult who you trust straight away.
• You can stop talking to someone in a chat room any time you want to.