Users with male or androgynous handles were virtually ignored in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms, according to the research, as chatters (predominantly male) swarmed what they thought were female users.

Assistant professor Michel Cukier and sophomore computer engineering student Robert Meyer conducted the study, setting up bots for one part of the experiment and posing as users with female, male, or ambiguous user names for another in various chat rooms.

On average, female usernames received 163 malicious private messages per day, compared to 4 for male usernames and 25 for non-gendered usernames. The researchers also determined that the messages were not from chat bots.

“The extra attention the female usernames received and the nature of the messages indicate that male, human users specifically targeted female users,” Cukier said.

In fact, according to the report, male members were astute at weeding out the bots and bombarding human users instead. Human users with female usernames averaged 163 messages versus 100 for bots with female usernames. This may have to do with the awkward responses a bot can often offer.

Tamer examples of malicious messages included:

[10:30] [charm] feeling horny?

[10:43] [DanMan] Do u need money? Looking for someone who does not mind providing personal intimate services. $150/hr. Serious offer. 178 74 male 29 here. Interested pls intro?

“Parents should consider alerting their children to these risks, and advising young people to create gender-free or ambiguous usernames. Kids can still exercise plenty of creativity and self-expression without divulging their gender,” said Cukier.

Melanie Killen, professor of human development at UM’s College of Education and associate director of the Center for Children, Relationships and Culture advises parents to begin talking with their kids around age 10.

She says parents should not use “heavy-handed” warnings or ban their children from chatting online, as both strategies might be ignored or could make them even more likely to explore.

“Sit down and have conversations on a regular basis on what they’re doing, what’s involved,” she says. “A lot of kids are very naive about this and feel it won’t happen to them.”

“Boys can be preyed upon too. And boys could be the ones doing it and thinking it’s not harmful,” she said.

The results of the study will be published in the proceedings of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers International (IEEE) Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN ’06) in June.

More Information:
Assessing the Attack Threat Due to IRC Channels

Helpful Links:
Social and Moral Development Laboratory

Center for Children, Relationships and Culture

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The wiki (powered by Socialtext, naturally) is private, but the video is streaming at http://131.107.151.221/scs and the IRC channel is irc://irc.freenode.net/#scs2006

Here’s some notes from a speed round talk by Clay Shirky: Games will transform the world of work

The Christian Rock problem is not just serious but intractable – modes of user interfaace and social interaction from worlds are not broadly portable to other domains and transfering to the world of work is highly limited. Castronova: real world value on virtual goods, but this invites people to ignore the _difference between productive and participatory value._ Assembly line with stolen car has extractable value, as opposed to a poker game with a stolen card. Latter is a site of participatory value, the value doesn’t stay with the card, and would disrupt the value of the game. Games are in the magic circle, sometimes physical, always mental, to immerse and expend energy to solve unecesary tasks. Exciting and addictive — tempting to beleive that if we open up the circle it will get out into the world, but what happens is the world comes into the circle.

Three theories:

* Games are normal

* High chance of outside applciability

* games are unusual

** average chanve of outside applicabilty

* games are special

** low chance of outside applicability (addictiveness makes portability low)

We will see a deeping rather than a spread of the things we know about game environments.

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Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.

He also writes Ross Mayfield’s Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.

Calling all Firefox enthusiasts: it’s time to submit your work for the chance to win great prizes and earn bragging rights as one of the premier Extension developers for Firefox! We’re looking for new and upgraded Firefox Extensions that focus on enhancing the Firefox experience, especially those that take advantage of new features in Firefox 1.5.

Jesse Ruderman has a quick overview of new Firefox 1.5 features that you’re encouraged to take advantage of. The computer you could win looks pretty nice.

Need help or ideas? Try the new IRC channel. Or look at the list that Jesse published. (Bonus points if you make his Google idea work with Yahoo too…)

Disclaimer: I’m one of the judges. I do not take bribes. Well, not often.

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Jeremy Zawodny is the author of the popular Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. Jeremy is part of the Yahoo search team and frequently posts in the Yahoo! Search blog as well.

Visit Jeremy’s blog: Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.

Esther hinted about it… Jerry said, “I know you were involved in a company we just bought, we just announced we acquired Flickr”

Marc Canter yelled out loud something for the first time in two years that wasn’t “FOAF” and we all applauded Caterina while Stewart was in IRC.

Jerry continued: “I am a little embarassed..” and Esther took Jerry’s picture. “We had to have these people with us… I hope stewart and caterina become our vanguards as we venture forward…”

James mentioned in IRC that drinks were on Stewart tonight.

“…Part of it is because as users we were admirers of the services and communities, then got to know the people, to help us build the next generation, we learned they liked us, and we will boldly venture into a whole new world… Hopefully one of these things where we will understand the communitity, help it grow, help Caterina and Stewart grow it.”

There will be much much more:

Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.

He also writes Ross Mayfield’s Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.