buey
Posts: 6
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What kinds of safeguards will this game employ to protect its users from online predators? When I heard about this game, I couldn't help but become concerned about it. Hello Kitty is a popular franchise, and has a huge fanbase of young girls. I would hate to see this game become some sort of internet playground for sexual predators. I am a male gamer, not your average crusading soccer mom, and I know just how bad some of the people in gamer circles can be. The MMO genre especially is a rather deep-seated genre within the gaming culture, and thus already has a rather large pool of potentially dangerous people to tap into. If this game is marketed/publicized well enough, you would have a large population of children in direct contact with a large untested population of adults with little to no moderation in the communication between players. This is far more dangerous than the threats that networking sites like MySpace pose, because: 1. Your target audience is younger than the typical MySpacer or Facebooker. 2. The game has live, interactive chat, a far more volatile medium than message board websites. I'm not even sure how you would pose and regulate any implemented security features, all I know is that I would really hate to see anyone hurt because of any degree of shortsightedness, and I'm sure the staff of this game would feel the same. Here is an example of what I'm concerned about: http://forumus.sanriotown.com/scripts/mb2/mb2.cgi?rm=show_topic&period=0&topic_id=27772 The original poster could really be anyone. The poster "speedychipmunk" is completely correct in displaying his concern, and it seems that the site administrator that responded to his post is rather shortsighted on just how much of a danger this site and this game portray. Sure, these points could hold true for any site, but Sanrio and Hello Kitty are again very strong names, and carry a very large fanbase. A staggering amount of people could get hurt by this.
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gm_calealen
Posts: 57
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Hi Buey! You did raise a good point there and let me enlighten you as to what we are doing to protect children against these things:Thank you for writing about this issue. Please be assured that child security and privacy are our most important concerns. Hello Kitty Online will launch with various child protection systems in place, as described below.Sanriotown.com and Hello Kitty Online comply with the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARUu). Caru's self-regulatory program sets high standards to assure that advertising directed to children is not deceptive, unfair or inappropriate for its intended audience. For more information on CARU, visit http://www.caru.orgSanriotown.com (and Hello Kitty Online, once it launches) is under moderator supervision 24 hours a day. Video and Photo content needs to be approved by a moderator before it can be viewed by players, and in the rare event that unacceptable content should slip by the moderators, the players themselves can report inappropriate content with just a click of a button. For text-based content, both in-game and on Sanriotown.com, we have word-filters in place to screen out unacceptable language. Please do note that Hello Kitty Online is not only for kids, but is open to anyone who wants to play. During our Closed Beta, our players ranged from teens to adults and we expect players of all ages once we launch the final version of the game. We understand that a lot of young children will want to play this game and we will therefore set up different shards for the game: those for young children which will have more restricted features (such as canned chat) than shards for older players. Once again, thank you for voicing out your concerns to us and we look forward to your support in the future. If you have any suggestions on such matters please do not hesitate to write us.As one of the GMs assisting our beloved players, I can assure you that we have placed measures to protect the interest of all parties concerned. As far as Hello Kitty Online is concerned, we make sure that the players are aware of the rules in-game and what penalties we have to impose to achieve game balance. Also, the players themselves, as a community are doing their part to help weed out undesirable people who tend to disrupt the peace and harmony of our realm. I hope this answered your query and thank you for helping us out also.GM CalealenHello Kitty Online Game Moderator Lead Officer
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buey
Posts: 6
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Text filters are often defeated by putting random characters in the middle of the word (ie. "he.llo" instead of "hello") Sorry if you find this irritating, but I just want to help make sure all bases are covered, from a gamer's perspective.
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Tohomiko_K
Site Admin
Posts: 2516
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Hi there, buey. Thanks for bringing this up, since all of us are concerned about this, given the wide target audience that Sanriotown caters to. One thing that I could say is that the biggest thing that we have to keep everything here safe for everyone is the presence of the moderators in every aspect of Sanriotown. We've got people watching over the forums, blogs, videos and Hello Kitty Online to maintain the site. One great thing about Sanriotown is the community aspect of it, because members who have spotted something off on the site also report it immediately, making it also easier for us to respond to the problems at hand.
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buey
Posts: 6
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The forums are all well and good, but what about ingame? I see that as the biggest threat, because it is unmoderated. I agree that canned chat is a good idea, but only if enforced correctly. Perhaps have canned chat (both sending and receiving) strictly as the only chat option, until the player verifies their age or parental consent using a credit card (just for verification, rather than charging). Here, if they are not verified, they cannot even see typed chat. Also have large disclaimers that parents should speak to their children before verifying these accounts, so that they know that they shouldn't give out personal information, and that they should report perceived offenders. Text filters are just not sufficient. You can easily convince people to give out personal information without using foul language.
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Horse
Posts: 2
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Dunno but I'm pretty sure they pedo-bait, or someone is doing that. Kinda weird.
Without even posting once on these forums I've gotten two copies of this message:
You have a message from ********.
Hi, My name is Shay. I am 11 turing 12 on February 18,2009. I live in
Toronto. I am a huge Hello Kitty #1 fan ever!!!! I have long black
hair,tan skin,brown eyes,kinda tall,and very pretty!!!! And if you
wanna talk on chitchat cafe,can you please attach your sanriotown.com
e-mail address? My is ********@hellokitty.com. Thanks.<3 Love,Shay
3>
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Wa
Posts: 117
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Originally Posted by buey ...
Text filters are just not sufficient. You can
easily convince people to give out personal
information without using foul language.
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Speaking of this, I would highly recommend removing the phone number option in the My Info section in game.
Originally Posted by Horse Dunno but I'm pretty sure they pedo-bait, or
someone is doing that. Kinda weird.
Without even posting once on these forums I've
gotten two copies of this message:
You have a message from ********.
Hi, My name is Shay. I am 11 turing 12 on February
18,2009. I live in Toronto. I am a huge Hello Kitty
#1 fan ever!!!! I have long black hair,tan
skin,brown eyes,kinda tall,and very pretty!!!! And
if you wanna talk on chitchat cafe,can you please
attach your sanriotown.com e-mail address? My is
********@hellokitty.com. Thanks.<3 Love,Shay 3>
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I got that too, and thought it sounded like pedo-bait as well. I mean, what 12 year old girl actually thinks she's pretty? I know I still don't think I am! xD
Either way I responded nicely in the unlikely event it wasn't. *shrug*
Help out the Hello Kitty Online wiki.
http://hellokittyonline.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
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buey
Posts: 6
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I notice that you have a thread warning users not to respond to requests for personal information. However, it is not nearly visible enough. Disclaimers such as these need to be easily accessible and extremely conspicuous.
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Mamimi
Posts: 8
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Posted by Beuy: Here is an example of what I'm concerned about:
http://forumus.sanriotown.com/scripts/mb2/mb2.cgi?rm=show_topic&period=0&topic_id=27772
---------------------------------------------------
The first thing I thought of when I saw that thread was 'Chris Hansen would be ALL over this thread!'
But then again playing this will make me feel kind of old, knowing that everyone else is at least 10 years younger. :x
The best way to protect kids from people like that, keep auto-logging on and search them for certain words. Or maybe needing parent's permission to play? :s
My in-game name is Mamimi.
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The Kittynator
Posts: 290
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This is where COPA & COPPA come in. They're 2 different things, but both do the same thing and that's to protect children online.
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