The Fairfax City police are warning parents and schools about a new Web site that some are calling a “predator’s paradise.”
“Chatroulette,” which has soared in popularity since coming online in December, activates the user’s web camera with the click of a start button. The user then is paired on-screen with live footage of someone else. The two strangers then watch each other as they type messages back and forth.
If either party gets bored, another click of a button brings up a new user, somewhere else in the world. But all too often, participants are engaging in unsavory behavior recognizable within seconds, or typing obscene messages. A 10-minute scan of the site brought up about 15 people, all but three of them men.
Most of them appeared to be in their 20s; most were sitting alone in a bedroom or on a couch. None was nude, though two were touching themselves inappropriately.
“I was really taken aback by the things that I saw,” said Sgt. Pam Nevlud, the Fairfax City policewoman who sent a warning e-mail last week to schools and community members, after hearing about the site on a local radio station.
“Children have a tendency to be inquisitive,” Nevlud said. “They’re not necessarily going to jump off of the site just because they saw what you or I saw.”
Even worse, she said, is the threat that they will be drawn in to a predator’s manipulations. “You’ve got lonely kids, you’ve got kids who don’t sit around the dinner table with parents, kids who are waiting to be invited to something,” she said. Nevlud’s e-mail has received significant attention, she said.
Local school systems have asked for copies of her letter to distribute to parents, and administrators have incorporated the site into lessons about Internet safety.
Even those playing Chatroulette admit it can be seedy. “Oh yeah, [parents] should be nervous — but what can they do?” wrote a young man online in Macedonia. “There’s crazy stuff here.”
Two Canadian sisters turned on the site after their mother left the house, they said. “You can probably tell what she thinks of it — too muchhh crazzy stuff,” they wrote. “Addicting like a drug LOL.”
