Yahoo closes chat rooms after misuse

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Reacting to angry protests from several of its top sponsors, Yahoo Inc has pulled the plug on perhaps hundreds of chat roomsoperating on its site after a media report revealed that some of the rooms were used to promote sex with minors.

Companies such as PepsiCo Inc, State Farm Insurance and Georgia-Pacific Corp stopped advertising onYahoo after they were informed that adults were attempting to lure children into sexual encounters within some of Yahoo’s user-created chat rooms, according to a report by KPRC-TV in Houston.

KPRC reported that in some cases, men were using Web cameras to send lewd pictures to minors in chat rooms with such titles as “Younger Girls 4 Older Guys” and “Girls 13 And Under for Older Guys.”

Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako, who declined to say when the service will return or why all the user-created sites were closed, said the Internet portal shuttered the service for improvements and to ensure “compliance with our terms of service.”