What a disgrace.  This morning I sent an email off to Gaia Online expressing my concerns about the “cyber” request that someone attempted to make to my daughter.  Here’s what I wrote and Gaia’s response.

My Letter to Gaia Online
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This weekend, my daughter decided to try out your Gaia Online community.  As someone who’s worked in the online industry for quite some time, I’m always a bit leery of social sites that serve children and teens, but most of the reputable sites actively monitor and put controls on chat activities.  Needless to say, I was extremely upset to see that after a couple hours of use, my daughter was getting “cybering”requests from people in your community.  Your site claims that you have a staff that “constantly monitors the forums to remove abusive or racist language, inappropriate images and adult content”, however it seems they don’t monitor too closely.

I took a screenshot of the incident which you will find attached.  While I understand that by targeting an audience of 13+, you are able to sidestep some of the more restrictive aspects of COPPA, the fact remains that your safety statement is quite misleading to parents.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at this address.
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Gaia’s response:
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Thank you for your note, although I’m sorry that your daughter had that experience. We provide a reporting feature on almost every aspect of our site so that members can bring inappropriate content, such as this, to the attention of our moderators. Unfortunately, the feature they used to contact your daughter is one of the rare ones that doesn’t yet have a report button. I will share your experience with our product team so that they can look into putting one on there.

Thank you again for alerting us to this.
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Needless to say, I’m not very happy. No mention of removing that member or really anything that they’re doing to try to prevent this. All they said was that they don’t have a reporting button on the chat feature but will consider putting one on in the future.

Buyer beware I guess, because it seems that Gaia Interactive isn’t going to do anything about it.

Parents all know about the various online communities and MMORPG games for kids.  Club Penguin, Toontown Online, Webkinz, they’ve all found their way onto our computers.  Well, this weekend we read about a “safe” online hangout for kids called Gaia Online in a family magazine (it was either Family Circle or Family Fun, can’t remember).

As a fairly responsible parent, I checked the safety guidelines that the website lists.  They include “a dedicated staff of moderators constantly monitors the forums to remove abusive or racist language, inappropriate images and adult content”.  Good enough to give it a try, right?  Nope.  Couldn’t be more wrong.

The kids played on the game for a couple hours before we kicked them off and forced them to go outside and enjoy the beautiful day.  My daughter forgot to log out and when I hopped on to my computer to see how my fantasy baseball team was doing, I saw this:

Yep, it only took a few hours for some scumbag to try and “cyber” with my kid.

Now what’s interesting about Gaia is that they state the site is targeted at kids ages 13+.  By doing so, they are able to circumvent many of the rules set forth by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which essentially saves them a ton of money as they don’t have to monitor as closely.  By making it 13+, they can really follow the same rules as games like Everquest and World of Warcraft from a safety and monitoring standpoint.

So, we had another talk with the kids at dinner about Gaia and reminded them about some basic online safety.  Ultimately its our responsiblity to teach the kids online safety, as we can’t count on these companies to create a safe online environment.

Needless to say, the kids won’t be playing on Gaia Online anytime soon.