The article's pretty unfair, though. Not every developmentally-arrested Animal Crossing-playing manbaby is a pedophile. I'm certain some like adult women, they just can't talk to them.

Yes, this is stupid. But I think the people in the article did have good intentions and bring up a really serious issue.
Most people have no idea what they are doing online, and even many young adult, who use the internet a lot, are completely unaware, how careless they are with sensitive informations.
Reminding parents that children should not be left free to do online what they want, is really a serious thing.
Just because a kid is at home, it doesn't mean that nothing could ever happen. And I'm not talking about being kidnapped, which extremely rarely. When left free to roam the internet as they like, kids can get in contact with things and people, they probably better not. We all know how much crazy and even horrible stuff is on the net, and I think almost anyone would agree that children shouldn't see a lot of them.
Sometimes we have 12 year olds on our TeamSpeak server for LotRO, playing with a bunch of people in their late 20s and 30s. Of course, we are completely harmless people, but I'm pretty sure most parents wouldn't be too happy if they knew their kids are hanging around with a group of adult strangers. It's not far fetched that they might end up to listen to some guys about how cool and save doing extacy is, or how we used to play with our parents guns.

I think responsible use of the the internet is a great challenge for society in the next 10 years or so. It's completely crazy that 20year old women, who live alone, have their full name and adress online, for really everyone to see!
In case of Animal Crossing, it's probably false alarm, but there are countless people who don't know what things are save and which are not.

Yes, this is stupid. But I think the people in the article did have good intentions and bring up a really serious issue.
Most people have no idea what they are doing online, and even many young adult, who use the internet a lot, are completely unaware, how careless they are with sensitive informations.
Reminding parents that children should not be left free to do online what they want, is really a serious thing.
Just because a kid is at home, it doesn't mean that nothing could ever happen. And I'm not talking about being kidnapped, which extremely rarely. When left free to roam the internet as they like, kids can get in contact with things and people, they probably better not. We all know how much crazy and even horrible stuff is on the net, and I think almost anyone would agree that children shouldn't see a lot of them.
Sometimes we have 12 year olds on our TeamSpeak server for LotRO, playing with a bunch of people in their late 20s and 30s. Of course, we are completely harmless people, but I'm pretty sure most parents wouldn't be too happy if they knew their kids are hanging around with a group of adult strangers. It's not far fetched that they might end up to listen to some guys about how cool and save doing extacy is, or how we used to play with our parents guns.

I think responsible use of the the internet is a great challenge for society in the next 10 years or so. It's completely crazy that 20year old women, who live alone, have their full name and adress online, for really everyone to see!
In case of Animal Crossing, it's probably false alarm, but there are countless people who don't know what things are save and which are not.

At the end of the article they do say it's not just AC, but really AC shouldn't be the main example of pedos. Wii and DS games are in theory safer then your Xbox, PS3, PC because of those accursed friend codes that act as some sort of barrier. It's also not fair to assume that adults playing AC are all pervs. I know plenty of grown men and women who play it for fun and such and don't even mingle with the young ones.

When I used to watch TV as a child my mum used to sit and watch it with me, to make sure everything was fine. The same should happen with the internet. I'm not saying watch like a hawk but to have a check every so often.

This guy's getting a lot of flak all over the Internet but honestly, look at any single screenshot for this game. Without knowledge of videogame culture, does it look like something an adult male would want to play?

I think using Animal Crossing (or any game on the Wii) is a BAD EXAMPLE. Of all the systems, Nintendo's online is the hardest to find a game and link up on. For the most part you need someone else's "friend code" to even access another Wii system. So how exactly is someone going to just plop Animal Crossing in and go about trying to assault little kids...

...unless that someone is an adult that said little kids know.

Random stranger guy, can not get someone's Wii Friend Code.

This information is accurate as far as Nintendo's Wi-fi info goes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Wi-Fi_Connection

"Each game that uses the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection generates a unique twelve digit Friend Code that can be exchanged with friends and be used to maintain individual friend lists in each game. Friend Codes are generated from an identifier unique to a copy of a game and the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection ID of a DS or Wii system. Using a different copy of a game or loading the same copy in a different system generates a new Friend Code.[1] In order for users to become "Friends", they must mutually add Friend Codes and will be authenticated as Friends once both have gone online. These measures are said by Nintendo to be conscious steps to preserve users' privacy. If a DS or Wii game is sold, but not the system, there is no risk of the purchaser impersonating the seller. If a user needs to replace his or her DS system, then the old system's Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection ID can be transferred wirelessly, to maintain the user's original Friend Codes on the new machine.

Many games have additional features that are enabled between two registered friends. These may include customized matchmaking options, cooperative play, friend lists, text chat, and voice chat."

Bottom line. If a child is talking to someone through your Nintendo, it should only be someone they associate with.

Now if this were say, A PS3 or XBox 360 or even PC, than this guy actually has a leg to stand on.

All the guy had to do was caution parents to monitor the online activity of their children.

What's funny is the idea of a parent logging onto Animal Crossing to see what adults might be playing -- oops, now the parent is a pedophile!

Kids are more likely to be molested by their creepy uncle than someone online. There really isn't any reason stupid people should speak, yet they can, and in a free country I guess it really isn't any of my business.

Greg that may be true, but that doesn't mean there are no predators online and that online games or chatrooms, etc aren't potentially dangerous too. These perverts use the internet to meet kids in real life a lot more than you'd think.

@Neuromancer, if you have some solid statistics, then I'd like to see them. Even the statistics on someone your child knows (like a creepy uncle) hurting them are small when compared against the country’s population of children. Then again somebody has to win the lottery so that doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye. What I'm stating is that we need perspective that is usually not provided.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited children ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_predator ):

1. An increase in encountering unwanted exposures to sexual material (from 25% to 34%).

2. An increase in cases of online harassment (from 6% to 9%).

3. A decrease in those receiving unwanted sexual solicitations (from 19% to 13%).

4. 40% of all youth Internet users said online solicitors asked them for nude or sexually explicit photographs of themselves.

5. Only a minority of youth who had unwanted sexual solicitations, unwanted exposures to sexual material, or harassment said they were distressed by the incidents.

6. One-third of the solicitations (31%) were aggressive, meaning the solicitors made, or attempted, offline contact with youth.

All this sounds pretty scary even to me. But let’s actually take some time to analyze this information. Number one deals with a very broad topic, “unwanted exposure to sexual material.” This could include popup adds for porn sites and the like and really have nothing to do with anything that would lead to physical harm to children. There’s the “mental damage” concern for some parents for which I don’t share, but this can be effectively managed by third party blocking software.

Number two deals with the equally broad “online harassment” label. What constitutes harassment? They did not state sexual harassment so they are talking more than sex. When somebody flips me off in their webcam when I total their car in Burnout Paradise, doesn’t that count as harassment?

Number three does use the word “sexual” to describe the solicitations but these seem to be going down. Still 13 percent is high. I should probably try to find out what they exactly mean by sexual solicitations, but I’ll skip that for now and blindly trust they mean something bad. Of course in my history of being online since the mid-90’s, I really don’t recall any sexual solicitations, but I’m not into online chatting, so maybe it’s going on there.

Number four seems remarkable. This makes me think they are talking about a specific Internet activity rather than being on the Internet in general. If this is the case, and I think that likely because many Internet applications do not easily afford this capability, this statistic is misleading. This would be like presenting statistics about the likelihood of your child being hit by a car and only using a large city like New York City as a sample set to represent the entire U.S. If this statistic comes from a particular Internet application like chat, then they should be clear because this gives a bad name to many other applications that may not only be NOT harmful, but helpful to your child. I know for a fact my 2nd grader comes home from school with educational websites that he frequently goes to on his own. Of course this does beg the question of how can 40 percent be getting asked for nude pics when only 13 percent are receiving unwanted sexual solicitations? Is this supposed to be 40 percent of 13 percent? Or are they implying that 27 (40-13) percent are WANTED sexual solicitations?

Number five seems to work against their statistics. Basically only a minority of kids thought it was anything to worry about. Why didn’t they include a statistic here? Probably because their big numbers like 34 percent become a lot less meaningful when perhaps 1 percent of kids pay any attention. The end result is less than 1 percent, or 1 percent of 34 percent. And that’s for their very broad statistic.

Number six goes on to belittle their statistics. One third (actually less than one third 31 percent, but they don’t seem very good at math) were aggressive. Note again they don’t translate this as 31 percent of 34 percent (taking their biggest number) or 31 percent of 13 percent using their smaller number.

Obviously they are massaging data to get across their own agenda. Their intentions are good, but I think they are putting a little more fear than education into parents. If we now take a look at an article at Slashdot, “Spreading "1 in 5" Number Does More Harm Than Good” ( http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/26/1322248 ), they do a much better job at analyzing this data.

A few of the points made by this article based on the same 2000 study done by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, the same study and data that the Center for Missing and Exploited children used for their statements:

7. The study surveyed 1501 Internet-using youths age 10 through 17.

8. The 1 in 5 figure was the number that had received at least one instance of unwanted sex talk (including from other teenagers), or sex talk from an adult (whether wanted or not), in the past year.

9. The proportion of respondents who received a sexual flirtation from an adult, followed by a request to talk on the phone or meet in person, was about 1%.

10. The number of survey respondents who actually befriended an adult online and then met the adult in person for sexual purposes, was zero.

11. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's own Web site links to a study -- also by one of the authors of the "Online Victimization" report -- which found that when all types of abuse are counted, 20% of females experience some type of sexual victimization before adulthood, compared to 2 out of 750 female survey respondents in the "Online Victimization" study who reported sexual abuse by someone they met online.

The article discusses this issue at much greater length so I encourage anyone interested to read it. For the record I have no affiliation with any party mentioned.

Of all the things that could happen to your children during their development, online freaks are a minor concern. With a small amount of education, they become a non-issue for your children. What has happened is that media personalities like Chris Hanson and the like have made tons of money by exploiting this issue. Sure this happens, but airplanes crash too. Unreasonable fear of airplanes develops because when they do happen, everyone talks about it for the simple reason that it is the exception rather than the rule. The mass coverage translates to mass incidents in those not really paying attention.

The one question which often comes to my mind that is probably not politically correct is, What makes a 10- 12- 15 year old actually response to an online freak? There was a recent incident, which I’ve only heard minor details, of a young girl (15?) sending nude photos to a freak online. Why would she do this? Don’t get me wrong, the freak should be given the death penalty in my opinion, but I also question the parents. It is ultimately our responsibility to stop our kids from sticking metal objects in electrical sockets and from sending naked pictures of themselves to BillyBob69. The former, if they do it, seems like dangerous curiosity. The latter seems like a desperate need for attention.

I like that we have organizations spending time looking out for kids, even when they profit in the course of doing so. I’m just arguing for a bit more realistic perspective here and an end to over-generalization and scape-goating. I guess it would be nice if the Easter Bunny was real too and gave out free candy, but that’s not going to happen either. (I’m just joking about the Easter Bunny kids.)

VIDEO GAMES SUCK ! GET A LIFE YOU PATHETIC LOSERS !

LISTEN!! the way Nintendo has set up their internet gaming makes it UBERLY hard for pedophiles to get in contact with children. The MO poliece should get a $^)(@^ grip, i have been playing Animal Crossing ever since the game cube version came out back. When Nintendo came out with Animal Crossing Wild World for the Nintendo DS i got it the day it was released and found out that i needed some friends to play it online over Nintendo's WFC (Wi-Fi Connection) to access other towns and players, you need three things:
1) Their Town Name
2) Their Character Name
3) The Friend Code
if you are even missing one of these three things, you can not visit another players town. So People need to relax and remember it is JUST A GAME a simulation game. I am 38 years old and in the next few months i plan on buying Animal Crossing City Folk for the Wii. I see no harm in an adult playing that game.