It's been a big week for internet safety. On Tuesday, the Home Office's internet crime forum published Chat Wise, Street Wise, a report highlighting the dangers posed to young people using chat rooms. And industry insiders report that the government is set to announce a spring internet safety summit.
But from today, chat rooms will be safer. At least, they will be if you follow an eight-point guideline issued by the Department for Education and Employment.
The new guidelines, written for the DfEE by the internet safety agency, Childnet International, are aimed at parents and teachers, but also send a message to the industry.
They recommend that children only use chat rooms that are moderated by a known moderator. They highlight the use of rooms that have topics advertised in advance, as the BBC does. And they warn against the use of rooms with advertising or other links that can draw children away from a group environment.
Safety is at the top of the list with checks for safety issues and password verification so that adults cannot pose as children.
One in five children who use computer chat rooms have been approached by paedophiles, according to the head of the internet crime forum. Detective chief superintendent Keith Akerman said: "There is clearly a problem out there of which parents are not yet fully aware. The aim of this report is to highlight the dangers and suggest ways the risk can be reduced."
But not all chat rooms are dangerous places, are they? Many are simply full of kids talking about their favourite bands and TV soap stars?
"If a parent went into a chat room, they might think it's harmless fun," says Stephen Carrick-Davies, of Childnet International, who wrote today's guide. "It's a good way to relax and have fun. We don't say that chat rooms should be shut down. They are here to stay and they have good educational opportunities.
"But the key thing that parents need to be aware of is that children have to lie to get online. It only works by giving an alias."
This means that people can pose as anyone else. I could call myself Bugs Bunny in a chat room. The potential for disaster is becoming clearer.
According to an NOP poll last November, almost 5m seven-to-16-year-olds in the UK use the internet and a quarter of those use chat rooms. But 10% have heard things in these rooms that embarrassed or upset them.
The main danger is that an adult may try to develop an inappropriate relationship offline with a child.
Last October, Patrick Green, 33, a divorced exports clerk from Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire, was sentenced to a five-year jail term for abusing a 13-year-old girl. He had met her in a chat room called Younger Girls for Older Men and exchanged messages with her for two months before meeting her.
He was arrested in Cumbria on his way to meet another 14-year-old girl he had met online and arranged to spend a weekend with. Judge Christopher Tyrer described him as a "predator" and ordered him to remain on the sex offenders' register for life.
Childnet is now lobbying the government to make enticement on the internet a recognised crime.
Last month, seven members of a global child pornography ring were jailed for distributing more than 750,000 images of child sex abuse. The club, which police believe had been operating for at least five years, required new members to provide 10,000 new images of child pornography as an entry fee.
The Wonderland Club involved the rape of boys and girls live on camera and the torture of children as young as two months. The images were so appalling that the National Crime Squad officers who had to look through them had compulsory counselling. To date, only two of the 1,236 Wonderland victims have been traced. It is feared that one of the two has been murdered.
Police and probation officers now fear that a wave of internet porn is sweeping the country, encouraged by light sentencing, some as lenient as 80 hours' community service. A financial adviser earning £100,000 a year recently received a three month prison sentence when police discovered that he often spent 18 hours a day downloading obscene images from the net.
But, says Carrick-Davies, the guidelines are not a knee-jerk reaction. "There are wonderful things that children can pick up in chat rooms. It introduces them to other cultures. However, we need to put the dangers in context.
"We are not saying the internet is evil and we must shut it down. We want to portray the brighter things but we want to say there is a dark side and these are the types of steps you can take to ensure that your children are really safe."
The guidelines
1. Is the chat room moderated?
2. Who are the moderators?
3. Has the chat room got a clear terms and conditions policy?
4. Does the chat room have a clear topic/subject timetable?
5. Does the chat room have advertising or external links?
6. Does the chat room give young people genuine opportunities for students to interact and shape the chat?
7. Does the chat room have appropriate access control and password verification? Can anyone join?
8. Does the chat room remind users about safety issues?