Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. Okay, well, it would. I should know -- I was a part of the last spillover problem, and that shit still gets bitched about. But...this was a very special, weird e-domestic-dispute containing spillover.

And it turned into a strange revenge-botting. By which I mean 'some idiot fills the room with similarly named sockpuppets to prevent others from getting into the room, in order to 'shut it down''.

Somehow, it had something to do with Islam:2 being full of bots, and...possibly someone from Islam:2 having looked at the chat list and noticing Religion:1 once. I honestly don't know -- there was zero sense being made.

I decided to go beyond zero sense, and into negative sense. I reported the user to Yahoo.

Subject: Auto Confirmation - Your Yahoo! Abuse support request was received
From: Yahoo! Customer Care [reportabuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com]
Date: 02-Mar-10 11:59

Hello,

This is an automated message regarding your recent request for Yahoo!
Abuse Customer Care support. We have received your message and will
respond within the next 48 hours with an answer.

Thank you for reaching out to us. We look forward to helping you!

Sincerely,

Yahoo! Customer Care

**Please do not respond to this message as no one will receive it.

That'd be their response. Also, there's more:

Subject: Re: Other Abuse (Not Listed)
From: Yahoo! Customer Care [reportabuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com]
Date: 02-Mar-10 19:42

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Customer Care.

We appreciate your report of abuse in Yahoo! Chat. I understand that you
would like to report abuse in Yahoo! Chat. However, I need some more
information from you first before I can further investigate your issue.

Please provide the following if you haven't already:

- Exact Yahoo! ID that you are reporting

- Your Yahoo! ID

- Name of the Chat room involved

If possible (and if you haven't already), please provide us a copy of
the harassment. You can do this by sending us a copy of the chat log
file. To do this you must turn on Chat Archiving in your Messenger
software.

While in Messenger:

1. Click on "Messenger" at the top of the client.

2. Click on "Preferences."

3. Click on "Archive."

4. Select "Yes, save all of my messages."

5. Click the "Apply" button.

6. Click the "OK" button.

If the abuse occurs again, please copy and paste the contents of the
archive with that particular user into your email to us.

To view your archived chat:

While in Messenger:

1. Click on "Messenger" at the top of the client.

2. Click on "Preferences."

3. Click on "Archive."

4. Click on the "View Archive" button.

5. Select the user you are reporting from the list in the left window.

6. Copy and Paste the offending text into an email to us.

Once we have received the necessary information, we can continue to
investigate this issue.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Jay Tyler

Yahoo! Chat Abuse

69004043

http://www.yahoo.com/

Original Message Excluded:
--------------------------

Okay. I can do that. I reply, keeping everything intact -- including the reference number in the subject line [which I've excluded here]. I find it a bit odd that I'm supposed to reply to this one, but not the other one, because they're the same email addresses. I figure it has something to do with the reference number...in the subject line.

But, whatever. It's Yahoo. There's probably some sort of method by which emails are sorted, right?

Subject: Re: Other Abuse (Not Listed)
Date: 03-Mar-10 11:13

Exact Yahoo ID: leprinced_de_deutschland
My Yahoo ID: Hunter.the_CrazyChick
Name of Chatroom Involved: Religion:1 [and possibly Islam:2]

The bots leprinced_de_deutschland used followed a naming pattern. s##s_gizmo_# [where # represents a numerical digit]. 'gizmo' was sometimes 'gizmodo' or 'gizmosaurus'. I think there were also instances of broken_gizmo. I can't be sure, as they don't show up in my logs.
Portions of the archive:

leprinced_de_deutschland: [15] we not play
dancingwithmisty: GO BACK TO IT, IF IT'S SO WONDERFUL
leprinced_de_deutschland: [16] LOCK
dancingwithmisty: R1 will NEVER be Islam2
demonrald: Mic ain't workin'
leprinced_de_deutschland: [17] unrstand?
demonrald: Audiho is lying.
leprinced_de_deutschland: [18] r1 b close
leprinced_de_deutschland: [19] LOK
audiho: dem, fuck you.
demonrald: She studies aberrant psychology.
audiho: :-?
demonrald: Especially guys who have bunny fixations.
dancingwithmisty: Get OUT
leprinced_de_deutschland: [20] thank lava
leprinced_de_deutschland: [21] ur name get lok now
demonrald: damn it
dancingwithmisty: Lava isn't even in here. GET OUT
audiho: oh, julio. :(
audiho: dem, your mic sucks, your life sucks, just kill yourself
leprinced_de_deutschland: [22] end of talk

leprinced_de_deutschland: [60] thank 2 lava
leprinced_de_deutschland: [61] n u r homo
leprinced_de_deutschland: [62] all ur name lok

leprinced_de_deutschland: [64] tel lave revove bot in islam chat and this bots leave

leprinced_de_deutschland: [84] when wickd pull bot from 2 I pill bot here
leprinced_de_deutschland: [85] this is deal no exce3ption

leprinced_de_deutschland: [89] gump name get loked now

leprinced_de_deutschland: [90] rel 1 closing down 2day
leprinced_de_deutschland: [91] find new rom
leprinced_de_deutschland: [92] hunter no talk
leprinced_de_deutschland: [93] name lok

Rough translation: he intended to shut down Religion:1 by filling it with bots. He also repeatedly threatened to lock other user names. He wasn't able to, but this doesn't change the threats or his intention to do so.

Apparently, he was back during the night, while I was asleep. It's likely that he'll also return today, but I probably won't have any record of that as I've ignored him.
Thank you for not sending me an auto-response asking me to ignore the individual.

So, there you have it -- my reply. Everything they asked for, right?

Subject: Re: Other Abuse (Not Listed)
From: reportabuse@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Date: 03-Mar-10 19:35

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Customer Care.

The Yahoo! Customer Care team that supports Chat issues is primarily
English-speaking.

Please forward a translation of the information and we will review the
situation further and take appropriate action.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Yahoo! Chat Abuse

69004043

http://www.yahoo.com/

Did you catch that?

If you're beating your head on your desk right now, or executing the world's largest and most emphatic facepalm, you're reacting exactly how I reacted. Except...I don't have a desk, so I couldn't really 'headdesk'. And I honestly couldn't decide which was more...warranted. I think both. Or at least some image of something else doing it -- a cute kitten with its face buried in its paws on the floor, or Puppet Angel, or, y'know, something less used than Picard. Maybe Jon Stewart.

Anyway, I replied:

Subject: Re: Other Abuse (Not Listed)
Date: 03-Mar-10 21:12

What I sent you *was* in English.

Which should've been the end of it.

Subject: Re: Other Abuse (Not Listed)
From: Yahoo! Chat chat-advocacy@cc.yahoo-inc.com
Date: 04-Mar-10 16:27

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Chat.

We appreciate your report of abuse in Yahoo! Chat. I understand that you
would like to report abuse in Yahoo! Chat. However, I need some more
information from you first before I can further investigate your issue.

Please provide the following if you haven't already:

- Exact Yahoo! ID that you are reporting

- Your Yahoo! ID

- Name of the Chat room involved

If possible (and if you haven't already), please provide us a copy of
the harassment. You can do this by sending us a copy of the chat log
file. To do this you must turn on Chat Archiving in your Messenger
software.

While in Messenger:

1. Click on "Messenger" at the top of the client.

2. Click on "Preferences."

3. Click on "Archive."

4. Select "Yes, save all of my messages."

5. Click the "Apply" button.

6. Click the "OK" button.

If the abuse occurs again, please copy and paste the contents of the
archive with that particular user into your email to us.

To view your archived chat:

While in Messenger:

1. Click on "Messenger" at the top of the client.

2. Click on "Preferences."

3. Click on "Archive."

4. Click on the "View Archive" button.

5. Select the user you are reporting from the list in the left window.

6. Copy and Paste the offending text into an email to us.

Once we have received the necessary information, we can continue to
investigate this issue.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Chat.

Regards,

Jay Tyler

Yahoo! Chat Abuse

69004043

http://www.yahoo.com/

Original Message Excluded:
--------------------------

Yeah. That feeling you have? You have read this before. It's pretty much the same, except for, y'know, the chat part.

So I sent them the same email as before, but with this line on the end:

That's all in English. I can't do much of anything to translate it into anything else, because 'can't type' isn't another language. This is pretty much what I've already sent to you before.

Their response? Scroll up to the last email they sent me. That was their response.

All I've learned from this is that the system that sorts their emails involves a beach pail of d100s on an uneven table and the Lemarchand Configuration.

I'm not exactly fond of Paltalk. It's set up to get you to pay for a less annoying [but probably not less enough] level of service, and I'm betting the 'you idiot, you clicked on a link! Don't do that! It might be a scam or porn or something!' doesn't go away even if you do pay.

It works as a chatroom, though. And, really, that's all that matters, isn't it?

The group is here, if anyone would like to come over from Yahoo for a bit -- at least until Yahoo gets back to working again.

Using Yahoo Chat right now is a real act of self-abuse. Free self-abuse, but still.

There's the 114 errors, which you're lucky enough to see if you're using the right alternative client. When you see a 114 error, your text hasn't actually been posted in the room.

In other words: the old 'users can't see eachother' problems are back.

Of course, this is an improvement over the 'sudden room death only seeing users enter and leave if you're lucky harbinger of the 114 that we were getting. So that's an improvement, I guess.

Then there's the 'two rooms at once' problem. That's a classic. It's where you go from one room to another, and end up seeing both. I'm not sure what causes that, but it has a similar effect as the 114. People can't see you, and it's fucking annoying.

All of this seems to lead up to the great showstopper on...roughly last Friday.

The complete disappearance of the user rooms list.

At first, nobody quite knew what was going on. A lot of the earlier problems were blamed on a beta release of messenger. That was all just fine by me. Yahoo was fucking up on its own, as usual. Completely normal.

"The ability to publish user-created chat rooms in the public Yahoo! Chat directory is currently unavailable. We are working on improvements to this service to enhance the user experience and compliance with our Terms of Service."

So much for normalcy....

That quote didn't come to anyone's attention until about 24 hours after the whole 'no more user rooms' thing started. Some of us really started to wonder why. Others just began jumping to insane wacko conclusions and premature celebrations, like:

"Yahoo outlawed user rooms."
"Yahoo pulled the user rooms to kill this room."
"Yahoo hates you."
"This room is finally going to die. I'm so glad."
"Yahoo is going pay. This is the first step."

Those were not in chronological order, of course.

For those of us who cared enough to ask "why?" there was a rumour.

One about a lawsuit, and child pornography.

That rumour was confirmed by this article.

Investigation Shows Big Business Funding Sex Chat Rooms
Companies Pull Ads After Local 2 Troubleshooters Expose Problem

POSTED: 10:10 am CDT May 31, 2005
UPDATED: 11:01 am CDT May 31, 2005
HOUSTON -- Several well-known companies have pulled ads from a popular online chat room service after a Troubleshooters investigation revealed to them what their money was funding, Local 2 reported Monday in an exclusive story.

Yahoo is facing a $10 million lawsuit, accusing it of cashing in on some disturbing chat rooms. The Troubleshooters' investigation showed what's really going on in those rooms.

The companies are paying huge fees for their ads to appear on Yahoo. But many are now canceling those ads because of the Local 2 report. The discovery has prompted fast action in corporate America and a strong reaction at the nation's capital.

"Yes, more legislation is required. The law has not kept up with this type of criminal activity," U.S. Rep. Ted Poe told Local 2.

Among the thousands of chat room titles, where people can look for common interests like music or movies, there are other rooms with some disturbing titles, such as:

9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex
Younger Girls 4 Older Guys
Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys
Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man
Girls 8 to 13 Watch Boys (In A Particular Sex Act)

The Troubleshooters found all of those rooms listed as education chat rooms, sponsored day in and day out by some major companies consumers have heard of -- all paying money for their ads to be seen before a person enters the child sex chat rooms.

"Children are the largest victimized group in this country and we need corporations to do the right thing," Child Rescue Network, Inc. spokesman Charles Clickman told Local 2.

Before entering the chat room titled "5 To 13-Year-Old Kiddies Who Love Sex" or "Girls 5 To 13 For Older Men," guests were required to click on a Star Wars-themed ad from Diet Pepsi.

Inside the chat rooms, not only were men trying to meet children or even take them away from home to run away, the Troubleshooters found countless adult men using Web cameras to send children in the room lewd pictures or display live nude images of themselves.

However, the nation's top law enforcement officers said it is all legal.

"Short of changes in the law in Congress, we may be limited about what we can do in this area," U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said.

Gonzales told Local 2 he can't use the laws now on the books to shut down Yahoo's child sex site. But back in 2002, Local 2 News broke the story when federal officials shut down a Web site called "Candyman" with those existing laws.

The "Candyman" site was geared only toward trading child sex pictures and stories, just like the Yahoo rooms.

"By doing what they're doing here with the advertising, this is endangering children and that's serious. I'm offended as a parent and I'm offended as a child advocate," Clickman said.

Sponsors around the country are reacting to what the Troubleshooters' investigation found.

Local 2 called Pepsi for comment and the company quickly pulled their ads. A statement from Pepsi said, "We were completely unaware that our advertisements were associated with these chat rooms in any way."

Countrywide Mortgage pulled its ad for refinancing because of the Troubleshooters' investigation. The company said, "We took measures to ensure that a situation like this could not occur again."

State Farm Insurance also pulled its ads, not only from the chat room but also from all Yahoo sites. The company said "We will be suspending our online advertising with Yahoo until it provides us a detailed explanation of how this situation was allowed to happen in violation of our contract, and until we receive sufficient assurance that our advertising will never again appear on inappropriate sites."

The same goes for Georgia-Pacific, maker of Brawny paper towels. Their ads were pulled and a spokeswoman said Yahoo admitted they did not adhere to the advertising contract with Brawny. The Troubleshooters found Brawny ads in a Yahoo chat room called "6 To 11 Year Old Girls Into Older Men."

Another big sponsor T-Mobile, did not respond to Local 2's request for comment.

"Yahoo is aware of the situation now. They are put on public notice by you folks and other people about what is taking place, and they need to come up with a solution to the problem unless they want the government to get involved and hold them liable, either civilly or even criminally, for these types of activities," Poe said.

Online ads just pushed Yahoo's income to more than double what it was a year ago -- up to $205 million.

Yahoo executives declined to answer the Troubleshooters' questions but issued a statement saying, "Yahoo strongly supports law enforcements' efforts to combat illegal activity on the Internet and works cooperatively with law enforcement to aid in their investigations."

The statement also said Yahoo's terms of service do not allow illegal activities but those same child sex chat rooms are being hosted by Yahoo.

The lawsuit against Yahoo accuses the company of capitalizing on child pornography when it hosted the Candyman site, and with the other sites like the ones we found still in action.

The lawsuit by the family of one child porn victim says Yahoo could have removed the sites, but instead chose to make money on them.

If you have a news tip for the Local 2 Troubleshooters, drop them an e-mail or call their tipline at (713) 223-TIPS (8477).

Copyright 2005 by Click2Houston.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Given the number of official-news-story-copies of this article, in rewritten form, that are floating around out there [Google News Search], I can't really care what they want or don't want. They can tell all those other people to cease and desist first.

The issue here isn't copyrights, though. The issue, obviously, is stupidity and money.

Yahoo pulled ALL the user rooms because their system allowed for some people to make stupidly named rooms under whatever category they wanted, and, if someone wanted to enter those rooms while using Explorer, the system required them to click on an ad.

Obviously that means Yahoo knew about the rooms, approved of them, and was sitting there gleefully making money off them. Otherwise, they wouldn't have the ads there, right? That's what the 'family of one child porn victim' says, after all. And you gotta believe the victim. Because they know what's going on in every head of every person in every physical location of this business, and they know that someone saw these rooms and said 'hey, that's a great idea. Let's make money off them, because we obviously don't show these ads in any other room.'

Right?

Before I even get started here, I've got one completely off-topic complaint.

What the fuck are a local news Troubleshooter team doing browsing chatrooms for newsstories? Aren't they supposed to be protecting their viewer-base from As Seen On TV scams and bad local business practices? I think the Troubleshooters need some troubleshooting.

Why?

Because:

• 9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex
• Younger Girls 4 Older Guys
• Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys
• Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man
• Girls 8 to 13 Watch Boys (In A Particular Sex Act)
• 5 To 13-Year-Old Kiddies Who Love Sex
• Girls 5 To 13 For Older Men

Because no self-aware pedophile would ever go into such obvious 'catch me I'm a pedo' room.

Room titles like that are not made by pedophiles. People have been over this before, on other servers, on entirely different chat networks. On certain IRC servers, all you'd see at first were similar names inviting older men to join children who can't even type for sex-chats. And instead of asking 'how can this not-pottytrained thing lacking essential motor-skills and brain development to operate a computer on this level create this chatroom and chat with these men,' people instantly leapt to 'CHILDPORN OMG CHILDPORN VICTIM VICTIM!'

Yes, there is a problem here. Yes, child pornography is a problem.

No, child pornography isn't the problem here.

The problem is with the vigilante motherfuckers who use such tactics to bait people who have probably never looked at a sexually-undeveloped human as anything other than what they're supposed to see it as. A child that needs to be sheltered from all manner of things.

I guess you could say that the problem here is that 'child' doesn't seem to stop at puberty, in the sense that many, many thirty year olds need to be sheltered from all manner of things they're not capable of handling. Like themselves.

I'm going to just come right out on the wrong side of the entire issue and give you an example:

People like that. People who go into chatrooms, who are not in any way law-enforcement because they could never pass the psychological evaluation. Fuckin' vigilante nutsos that spend their days going into chatrooms just so they can post the final, edited IM product on a webpage, along with names, addresses, phonenumbers, and any other personal information they can get.

At this point, some of you are probably getting the incredibly bright idea to point at me and say 'hey,that's just like you'. Sorry, I have never gone into a room with a faked-up profile, encouraged guys to IM me, edited out everything that led up to an IM prior to posting it to my website, and then completely wiped the profile I used to get these people to IM me.

People like this....

People like this are the ones creating those rooms. People like this will do just about anything to get a 'bust'.

This all annoys me so very much, and not just because it interrupts my routine of managing to avoid getting anything done, ever. It annoys me because it's not doing anything useful.

Also, nobody's releasing much information. Nothing relevant, anyway. You can find out that Yahoo UK & Ireland are apparently going away. You can also find out how to find the user rooms because they are still there. [Personally, I prefer the whole 'figure out the /goto username_of_person_in_the_room2005 command' trick, but that's just me.] There's just not much else out there.

Like this lawsuit. Something about it just seems too vague. A 'victim of child pornography'? Who is this 'victim'? How old is this victim? Was this victim under the age of consent? Was this victim prepubescent? If so, where the fuck were the parents? Did they think the computer was a babysitter or something?

Or is the victim over eighteen? If so, which employee of Yahoo forced them into those rooms? Or were they somehow exposed of their own free will? Did they go looking for child porn? What the hell is going on here?

And have I mentioned yet that I don't buy that there were pedophiles in those rooms, or that those rooms were actually made by individuals of the age-groups listed in the title?

How's this sound? Troubleshooters, go back to doing your fucking job and protecting people from shit products and local business scams. Pedo-vigilantes, get help.

Yeah. You heard me. Get. Fucking. HELP. Take your fucked up childhood issues to a therapist. Don't take them out on random people in chatrooms that you're convinced are the people who touched you just because they happen to be the right age and gender. Leave the criminals to the police. You can't possibly be sane and think you're helping by entraping people with dishonest tactics, destroying evidence, and then harassing people and trying to ruin their lives by telling every individual you possibly can that they 'tried to touch me when I was pretending to be twelve even though I'm actually fifty.'

I'd say 'don't take it personally', but I know you can't help it. You have to take it personally. This has to be all about you. You, you, you, being targeted by either a kid-toucher [no, I'm not], or someone who thinks that it's just a-ok to fiddle with the undeveloped sexual bits of a five year old.

No, I'm not that either. But I suppose saying that doesn't help that I came out on the wrong side of groups like PeeJ. I've made myself a target -- maybe not here, but I'll bet they'll be talking about me on their hidden-from-public-view messageboards if they ever see this -- by having an opinion.

While I'm having an opinion, speaking my mind, and expressing doubts, I might as well mention http://www.corrupted-justice.com/. Since I'm obviously targeting certain groups that think they're fighting some good fight.

And while I'm posting links, I might as well link to this news report about cops saying that the groups aren't helpful.

And here's a google search on the words 'perverted justice'. That should help people form their own opinions. I'm fair like that.

As of right now, AvsC is still dead. The user rooms, which were showing some signs of being re-listed last night, are still unlisted.

And people are still stupid.