Yahoo! shuts chat rooms over paedo fears

Yahoo! has shut down its user-created chat rooms after a TV station reported that some of them were being used by adults to promote sex with minors.

The chat rooms were shut down in the last week but Yahoo!'s other chat rooms are still up, according to a Yahoo! spokeswoman.

The closed chat rooms had titles such as "Girls 13 and Under for Older Guys" and "Younger Girls for Older Guys", according to a report by KPRC-TV in Houston. Advertisers including Georgia-Pacific, Pepsi Cola and State Farm Insurance withdrew their ads after they found out they were appearing in the chat rooms, the TV station said.

The spokeswoman declined to confirm or deny the report, saying only that Yahoo! is "working on improvements to the service to enhance the user experience and compliance with our terms of service". She added: "Yahoo! condemns abuse of internet tools and services for illegal activities."

She could not specify how many sites in total were shut down.

A spokesman for Pepsi Cola confirmed the KPRC report.

"We were notified back in April by the Houston TV station that our ads were associated with these chat rooms. We were unaware of the situation," he said. "We worked with Yahoo! to pull them right away and they did."

Pepsi is still advertising on other parts of the Yahoo! website, the spokesman said.

Yahoo!'s user agreement prohibits users from harming minors in any way and from making any content available that is unlawful, obscene or objectionable.

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com