March 14, 2003
SMS Chat Danger
Per an article in The Copenhagen Post, a 14-year-old Swedish girl came face to face with a 55 year-old man dressed only in his underwear. He had passed himself off as 16-year-old Kevin. The two had gotten to know each other by SMS Chat and were meeting for the first time. She fled onto the street crying and passers-by helped her call the police. The man was charged with indecent exposure and for attempting to have sex with a minor.
There has been much (good) work done to guard children against the dangers of online chatrooms, but very little to date, on warning them about the perils of meeting the wrong person in an SMS chat. The whole appeal of an SMS chat is to meet other people in your area and one of the key features of these services are their localisation capabilities, which are able to narrow down a person's whereabouts to 500 meters. That's awfully close.
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