DS, unsuspecting kids being lured into dangerous chat rooms w/transcripts!

Ikohn4ever

Ikohn4ever

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This is what I heard as a promo for the local Philly Channel 6 news. Here is what their site says:

Feb. 13, 2006 - Are unsuspecting kids being lured into dangerous chat rooms using this toy!
It does more than just play games.

Can it hook children up with strangers?

"Never did I think I had to warn her..."

Tuesday on Action News at 11: Is the Nintendo DS connecting your child with Strangers?


I think I might tune in for a good laugh, and I cant wait for the hard hitting news report. Here is the link, it might have the story after they show it on the 11pm news. I will try to post what they "dig" up on the DS if I have time later. http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=special_coverage&id=3905371



Feb. 14, 2006 - We have an important warning for parents. Today marks the three-month anniversary of the launch of the Nintendo DS Wireless Connection. But Action News has learned this popular gaming system could put kids in harm's way.
Parents buy the system so their children can play video games. But we have made an alarming discovery. Strangers can use this toy to lure unsuspecting children to dangerous places.

Nintendo's hot new creation markets primarily to children. It even comes complete with playmates. The handheld gaming system is like a mini computer. It has built-in wireless capability. That allows kids to battle fellow Nintendo DS players across the room or across the world.

"They can play somebody they've never met."

All you need is a home wireless network or a Wi-Fi hot spot. And the game is catching on. Just this week, Nintendo announced more than 850-thousand users have logged on since the service's launch last November.

"It's a great thing for kids to have - they love it."

But as Theresa Keel learned, that revolutionary wireless capability also comes with a potentially dangerous problem..

"It could be putting your children at risk."

Theresa's 11-year-old daughter, Emily likes to doodle so she's using the Nintendo DS Pictochat feature. Pictochat puts you right into a chatroom and let you send messages wirelessly - and on this day we are in one of Philadelphia's many Wi-Fi hotspots.

Theresa Keel/Center City: "This screen name pops up and asks her what her name is and how old she is, and she answers."

Emily Keel/Center City: "And I just felt a little scared and confused."

This has happened to the Keel's once before. But this time the screen name is so offensive, we can't even show it to you.

"It frightened me. It really did."

The stranger asks Emily: "Hey what's up? Are you still here? My name's Jud. What's your name?" "But it was scary to me as a parent that someone I don't know is talking to my child over what I consider a toy." And Jud is persistent. When Emily won't tell him where she lives. He says, "Why won't you tell me? Don't want to chat? Why not? Are you afraid?"

Keith Dunn/Internet Safety Expert: "Predators are using Nintendo DS anywhere in the world. And it's going to be really hard to track down those individuals because of course, they're on a wireless network from a hotspot such as a coffee shop. Or if they're in a wireless environment, say a coffee shop or whatever, they jump on the wireless network so now you have predators who are trying to get at our kids."

Internet safety expert Keith Dunn says parents need to teach their children to apply stranger danger rules to every and any situation.

"Don't talk to strangers in game rooms if you don't know they're your friends. Don't talk to anyone. Just stop talking. Stop chatting in the game room."

Dunn also says parents should educate themselves.

"Parents really need to pay attention to what they're purchasing, ask a lot of questions, and really find out more about the game, what's involved - other than the video game aspect of it. Can you talk to other people? Can other people connect to my son's or daughter's mini game system?"

Now Theresa and Emily are on alert. They don't plan on taking any chances.

"And eventually I got really scared that I shut the thing off without responding back."

Nintendo confirms what happened to Emily is possible but the company claims that person must also be using another DS system and be within 65 feet. Like our expert, Nintendo also warns parents to educate their children not to talk to strangers even on their gaming system. Also, beware, there are other wireless gaming systems made by different manufacturers and they may have similar issues.
 
Local News mixed with children... ohhhhh dear gawd.

Umm, I was pretty damn young when I started using the net/electronic communication years ago, and I never had any problems with this sort of thing. Reason? I wasn't farking stupid!
 
[quote name='Ikohn4ever']"Never did I think I had to warn her..."[/QUOTE]


Warn her about what? How totally fun Mario Kart is?

Seriously, this sounds stupider than hell...
 
[quote name='Dr Mario Kart']thats so retarded I think it just gave me cancer.[/QUOTE]

calculon.jpg
 
[quote name='Ikohn4ever']This is what I heard as a promo for the local Philly Channel 6 news. Here is what their site says:

Feb. 13, 2006 - Are unsuspecting kids being lured into dangerous chat rooms using this toy!
It does more than just play games.

Can it hook children up with strangers?

"Never did I think I had to warn her..."

Tuesday on Action News at 11: Is the Nintendo DS connecting your child with Strangers?


I think I might tune in for a good laugh, and I cant wait for the hard hitting news report. Here is the link, it might have the story after they show it on the 11pm news. I will try to post what they "dig" up on the DS if I have time later. http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=special_coverage&id=3905371[/QUOTE]


how does the DS hook into chat rooms??

and dont the normal mail hook people up with strangers... who the hell knows who is sending all this junk mail to people OOOOOO SPOOKY : )
 
The thing is, if the news channel is stupid enough to run a story like this... chances are there are people stupid enough to believe it.:lol:

Any way for you to record it and get it on your computer? Maybe you could put it on rapidshare or Google video for the rest of us to see?
 
[quote name='eldad9']Pictochat.[/QUOTE]

But you have to be within a hundred feet or so.
That makes it even worse, since the child molestor is probably watching you while pictochatting!
 
So will the news team film some actor to posing as Chester the molestor in his van on the street outside of a school? Are there ANY documented cases of predators using pictochat?


Must be a sloooooooooooooow news day.
 
Actually, I'm going to have a little chat with my 8-year old nephew about being careful with Pictochat. We were chatting the other day, and someone popped in and tried to chat with us. I think that they were pretty far away since they kept signing in and being disconnected.
 
Now of course I'm sure this news story is a piece of sensationalistic fluff, however, to be fair, while playing AC:WW recently it is not uncommon to come across kids. I've seen people claiming (at least) to be as young as 13. I started off simply by adding people from CAG, but then I met other people who were visiting their towns. They often ask for you to "register" them which is easy to do in game (one click, don't need to know the code). Then in their towns I've met other people, etc.

There is one guy who's town I liked to visit because he has it set to summer, so I can catch fish and bugs that aren't in my town. That is all I go there for, but he's a big chatter and I just found out this last weekend that he is 13! I think I'll avoid going there from now on. So, anyway, I could see how an unsupervised kid could fall into some trouble, EVEN on AC:WW. And I have found that these KIDS (he had friends over and they were in the town at the same time) are VERY chatty about stuff - they even wanted to exchange emails with me (!), and gave me theirs (which I did not even look at let alone write down). I declined and pointed them to this site if they want to chat about AC stuff with me :D. They had heard of it by the way...

My daughter (who is going to be 9 next month) has her own copy of AC and only has me and one other person registered on her cart. I'll be very careful to make sure she doesn't register other people who she might see in my town.

Now if this story turns out to be about people sitting in vans outside schools using Pictochat, then that is another story. Personally, I see no use for Pictochat given that it is not W-Fi... And even then, I would just use it to talk to my daughter while I'm on business trips.
 
[quote name='Zing']Cmon, everyone knows myspace is the hot place to pick up the 10 yr old chix.[/QUOTE]

While your comment is in jest (I hope!) it does illustrate the fact that there are 1000x more dangerous places on the Internet for kids than anything they'll run across on a DS.
 
Seems like the big kick in the media lately is rappin' about pedophiles. I mean, seriously, W-T-F??? Most working peoples' wages are either stagnant or in decline while the rich get richer, the cost of daily living is sky rocketing, pension plans are being yanked out from underneath the working class, sick bastards in the lending industry are spreading around *50 year mortgages*, gas isn't getting any cheaper, the current administration continues to march down the path of corruption and greed, there are two wars going on, the hawks are beating the drum and looking sternly at Iran...

... and the news media is talking about kiddie touchers? If I had a billion dollars, I'd buy millions of copies of Barry Glassner's "The Culture of Fear" and send 'em out all over the country. It's a proven fact that the vast majority of these types of crimes are not committed by the creepy stranger seducing children with candy from a van but rather from immediate family members and close relatives.

Anyway! Thanks Io, for making me feel like a heel for filthing up my Animal Crossing town with my rapidly-approaching-middle-age, smart-assed drinking buddies. But at least I give people a warning prior to exchanging friend codes that my animals tend to have sewer mouths and show off comically appalling letters...
 
[quote name='Scobie']
Anyway! Thanks Io, for making me feel like a heel for filthing up my Animal Crossing town with my rapidly-approaching-middle-age, smart-assed drinking buddies. But at least I give people a warning prior to exchanging friend codes that my animals tend to have sewer mouths and show off comically appalling letters...[/QUOTE]

Hehe, no worries man. I've been part of some R-rated and above chats in AC:WW with CAGers (all of age of course!). As long as everyone knows what's going on, it's no problem!

By the way, spot on post :D
 
Reggie needs to teach all the kids how to take names and kick ass. Then we wouldn't have this problem.

Reggie is a god.
 
i think the philly station is trying to catch wind of a incident that happend in the Tri-state area where Cops acted as young girls caught 14 pediphiles in chat rooms asking to have sex with them...with 1 being a NYC fireman and the other being a Lietenant colonel of the US Army.

EDIT: I think anything that has a chat feature they will try to blame for as a way for peediphiles to meet children...
 
could this be worse then that CSI show with the game cult killier people or whatever it was. I don't watch that show I remember someone here made a thread about it.
 
[quote name='Ikohn4ever']added transcripts of the show[/QUOTE]

Wow, at least they added the part about the 65 feet thing at the end - though they imply before that the "predator" could be anywhere in the world and trying to find out where the girl lives. In this case it is SCARIER than that because the guy is probably watching her as he typed (since they were in a WiFi hot spot even though that was utterly unneccessary :roll: ). What a poorly written, ignornant piece of "journalism" that was - they are definitely implying Pictochat works over the Internet, despite the clarification at the end. Most people who don't know better won't pick up on that though. If someone is chatting her up in Pictochat they need to fucking look around the room and find out who it is - it might just be another kid, who the hell knows.
 
Old media always tends to fear new media. When radio came out, newspapers warned about its potential evils; when television came out, radio did the same for it. The internet has taken heat from all three since it moved into mainstream culture.

Now that established media outlets are losing key demographics (18-34 yr old males) to video games, we'll be hearing of more warnings about the dangers of gaming.

We won't, however, likely see any stories about the reason why a lot of people are abandoning TV/radio/newspapers is because they're all in on the dumb-'em-down-game that's played by ignoring issues of any real import to people's daily lives and never questioning the status quo, instead providing us only with buying guides, divisive fear-mongering crime news, and party-line politics.

There's even less of a chance that it will change.
 
[quote name='RelentlessRolento']um... nintendo is safe as hell with friend codes... as safe as banana popsicles.[/QUOTE]

Yes, but apparently this 11 year-old girl hacked her DS to use Pictochat over the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection (and somehow communicate with other non-hacked DS's), bypassing the friend's codes in the process, thus thwarting Nintendo's best efforts to protect her :lol:.

The report was a muddled mess of Internet fearmongering. There ARE concerns with minors using the DS, but I would be more concerned with the perv sitting at the next table over chatting her up via pictochat than some random person on the Internet (who can't do any such thing).
 
i wish i could use pictochat over wifi, then it might actually be a useful program... right now all i use it for is to draw to myself when im really really really bored at work
 
[quote name='iheartmetal']i wish i could use pictochat over wifi, then it might actually be a useful program... right now all i use it for is to draw to myself when im really really really bored at work[/QUOTE]

Maaan, all you need are some Post-it Notes and a pen. Instant flip book...
 
Oh great now we'll probably have to endure a sequel to When a Stanger Calls; When a Stranger Pictochats.

Seriously Nintendo needs to force the media to tell the whole truth of the matter, this could cost them some sales from parents who are ignorant (which there are a lot of).
 
Sounds like some teenager decided to be a douche when he saw her using the DS . I particulary like the line "I was scared someone I didn't know was talking to my daughter over what I consider a toy". Hey stupid, welcome to the 21st century where people of all ages use these "flickering boxes".
 
what I consider a toy[/b]". Hey stupid, welcome to the 21st century where people of all ages use these "flickering boxes".
Click to expand...
There's nothing like parents who buy a $130 "toy" for their small children without knowing what it is and does.
 
what I consider a toy[/b]". Hey stupid, welcome to the 21st century where people of all ages use these "flickering boxes".
Click to expand...

Haha... seriously. Would've also been nice to note that the *average* gamer is around 30 years old these days.

I've got nothing against kids or families or any of that stuff... If you wanna wreck all your fun and give yourself a lifetime of worry and debt, go right on ahead and have kids. But what I do resent is the attempts by some (usually a "council," often with the words "family" or "parents" in their name) to dumb down and take the edges off of the culture to protect the children.
 
[quote name='Scobie']Seems like the big kick in the media lately is rappin' about pedophiles. I mean, seriously, W-T-F??? Most working peoples' wages are either stagnant or in decline while the rich get richer, the cost of daily living is sky rocketing, pension plans are being yanked out from underneath the working class, sick bastards in the lending industry are spreading around *50 year mortgages*, gas isn't getting any cheaper, the current administration continues to march down the path of corruption and greed, there are two wars going on, the hawks are beating the drum and looking sternly at Iran...

... and the news media is talking about kiddie touchers? If I had a billion dollars, I'd buy millions of copies of Barry Glassner's "The Culture of Fear" and send 'em out all over the country. It's a proven fact that the vast majority of these types of crimes are not committed by the creepy stranger seducing children with candy from a van but rather from immediate family members and close relatives.

Anyway! Thanks Io, for making me feel like a heel for filthing up my Animal Crossing town with my rapidly-approaching-middle-age, smart-assed drinking buddies. But at least I give people a warning prior to exchanging friend codes that my animals tend to have sewer mouths and show off comically appalling letters...[/QUOTE]

You are absolutely correct in everything you said. News programs will latch onto any sensational story no matter what. Nancy Grace on CNN lives off that crap.
 
As others have stated, I like how they tacked on the fact tha the person has to be within 65 feet to use pictochat. What that "story" should have focused on is how Nintendo's online model is about the safest one out there for kids.
 
Terrible reporting. It almost makes me not want to bring my DS into Philly International Airport since I would be branded as some type of Kid Toucher, because I like to play games where "Touching is good"
 
The "safety expert" interviewed just wants parents to buy his $100 software that spies on kids (or adults) and sends the results to their parents (or other people).

http://www.kdcop.com/

That's right, a spyware vendor.

Quoting from his site:

How the eBlaster Remote Install Works

The eBlaster Remote Installer program will allow you to pre-configure eBlaster and will then save an INSTALL FILE on your computer.

You will then email this INSTALL FILE to the employee or child so that it is received at the computer to be monitored. For most email programs, you will simply ATTACH the INSTALL FILE to the email. You may wish to include a short note. You then click the SEND button.

The email with the Install File attached will then be sent to the recipient's email address.

When the recipient opens the email, they will need to click on and run the INSTALL FILE which will be attached to the email. The INSTALL FILE will execute and install itself with no interaction needed from the employee or child.
 
For those interested, you can file a complaint here: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=stationinfo&id=3293957

Or call them here: 866-639-7749

I'm going to file a complaint. I urge all others to do the same. Keep it sensible and professional, people.

(BTW if this has been suggested already, I apologize, I'm on dial-up at work so I don't have time to scour the thread.)

And basically tell them that they are idiots and that the parents in question are idiots also, and that sensationalist propogandic post-9/11 news needs to die a lonely, horrible, bloody death, perferably by violent kids mimicking GTA.

Note: I just saw on the complaint page you can add a file. I wonder how long until someone coaxes them into installing a virus on their machine.

But you didn't hear me say that....or suggest it....
 
Keith Dunn was a pedophile entrapment cop. He sat around all day netsexing with whoever would listen in hopes that some lonely guy who likes lolicon will try to meet up with him, bringing Keith closer to that month's quota. What a winner.

*edit* He is no longer a detective.

Here is another winning quote from him:
"I have worked undercover online as a 12 year old for many years".

You go boy!!
 
I sent them this. Enjoy.

I just watched your appalling segment about the Nintendo DS that is on your website of lies: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=special_coverage&id=3905371 . I love how jounarlism and reporting the news is never about giving straight facts. It is only after you drag the DS and the Nintendo WFC through the mud that you actually tell the truth about the systems capabilities. The games out for the Nintendo DS that are online don't even let you interact with strangers, you have to swap friend codes. Even after that, you can't really talk to them, at least not in Mario Kart DS. Also saying that the DS is marketed towards kids is another misconception the media has about anything Nintendo puts out. But that is another topic. Why don't you do a story about how Xbox Live has already had people been affected by pedators. What about the PS2 and PSP, they both have vioce chat online. Way to do some research. Also don't you find it funny that a mom is trying to protect her kid from danger in a bar that probably has cigarette smoking allowed in it? It is proven that smoking kills. Ask Peter Jennings about that. If you wonder why people don't buy news papers or watch the news on TV anymore it is because all you guys do is blow things way out of proportion and never give any real facts. Thank you for your time, may your news agency crumble.
Click to expand...
 
[quote name='Zing']Keith Dunn was a pedophile entrapment cop. He sat around all day netsexing with whoever would listen in hopes that some lonely guy who likes lolicon will try to meet up with him, bringing Keith closer to that month's quota. What a winner.

*edit* He is no longer a detective.

Here is another winning quote from him:
"I have worked undercover online as a 12 year old for many years".

You go boy!![/QUOTE]

I'm sorry, but I don't see why you are ragging on this guy. Anyone who takes a pedo out of action is alright in my book.
 
One thing you have to understand about news is, "reports" like this come pre-packaged. The local news station just buys the video from another company and shows it on TV. They don't actually do any reporting or investigate the story themselves. The TV news market is far too competitive and fast to create their own content or to even check up on the facts, especially for local broadcast stations. I wouldn't doubt that this "news report" was produced by Keith Himself.
 
[quote name='lebowsky']I'm sorry, but I don't see why you are ragging on this guy. Anyone who takes a pedo out of action is alright in my book.[/QUOTE]

Someone places a TV set in their front yard with a huge sign that says "FREE! TAKE ME!". It's a nice TV so you pull over and put it in your trunk. The owner presses charges against you for theft.

Sound fair?
 
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