Msn Chat News

MSN to close chat rooms
September 24, 2003
Microsoft says it will drop chat room services in 28 countries next month, in a move it says will ward off pedophiles and junk e-mailers. But tech analysts said the changes would help the software giant get rid of users who don't pay and are not contributing to the company's bottom line. "They're trying to move people to their paid subscription sites," said Ian Brown, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, a technology think tank. "They are shutting down services for which people are not paying and getting a good bit of P.R. out of it. " In a statement, the Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said it made the decision following the growing abuse of the Internet, particularly in unsupervised, anonymous chat rooms.