1 Chat Avenue
AKA Chatave ripoff Track IP addresses and install trojans, virus etc. Then they block complaints!

I received five abusive emails from Chat Avenue's "Chat Master" (originating from a user of Rogers Cable Inc in Canada). He threatened me and made libellous accusations against my family, apparently because my teenage son had annoyed him in a chat room. Worse still, even though he was writing official emails, he refused to provide his name. I requested it several times.

So, I visited his web site at www.chat-avenue.com to find out the owner's contact details so I could make a complaint. BIG mistake!

As I left the chat room, after talking with an unhelpful chat moderator, my antivirus software started popping up multiple warnings (12!). I figured the moderator was tracking my IP to find out who I was, or to boot me.

Some of the trojans were:

Hacktool. Proxy
trojan. ByteVerify
Trojan Horse
Downloader. Trojan

Now I was pretty angry, so I went to Symantec and discovered these trojans were serious privacy invaders (key stroke loggers and giving chat-avenue the ability to access my computer, for example).

Next I went to the chat-avenue forum to ask about the trojans, and to seek help in removing them. When I read the 'tech support' forum, I was amazed to see many other posts complaining about the same thing.

Obviously this site does not take computer security seriously and has zero respect for their customers.

In response to my complaints, here's what I got:

- more abusive emails from admin@chat-avenue.com
- my forum posts were locked, as were others complaining about the trojans. This means nobody is permitted complain about viruses installed by the moderators/site/banners.
- my IP was blocked, so I cannot communicate with the owners to complain about the abuse or trojans.

Possibly the WORST customer service on the net.

But that's not all.

Chat Avenue promotes itself as a "kid safe" site and even has its support of COPPA (http://www.ftc. Gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm) "the Children's
Online Privacy Protection Rule" on its privacy page. What a joke! They bombard users on every page with pornography and half the chat rooms are pornographic in nature. Even their image ALT tags promote the word "adult", which is generic on the internet for "pornography".

Their Kids Chat Room was full of adults, blatantly seeing sex with children. As far as I could see, there were no efforts to remove these adults (with names like "Old man in raincoat" and "man seeking 13 f"). The site is NOT kid safe and I advise all parents not to let their children anywhere near it.

Funny thing is, they booted me for making a legitimate complaint about the abuse and trojans, but let Mr "man in raincoat" stalk children. Anyone see something wrong here?

If you have had a similar experience at chat-avenue.com please post it here, because sites like this should be booted off the internet.

Karen
Lake Macquarie
Australia

Company: 1 Chat Avenue
Country: USA
Site: www.chat-avenue.com

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