How Habbo Hotel Proves That Human Moderators Cannot Stop Online Sex Predators

LONDON, June 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Last night's Channel 4 News programme highlighted how human moderation techniques are not working, especially for Habbo Hotel, an online game with 10,000,000 monthly unique users.

The Met Police and many other online games for kids have already realised the problems of relying solely on human moderators and have instead opted to employ intelligent technology that has proven to be 98.4% accurate in identifying online predators looking for victims, as well as harassment and spamming (Independent tests by Cambridge University). 

Only last month this new technology, known as Crisp 'Kids & Teens technology' saved the Met police hundreds of man hours searching through chat logs to identify vulnerable targets.

Going further than simple keyword filtering, the technology is able to analyse the behaviour of users.  Crisp technology intelligently finds the chat that humans need to read and take action on, crucially saving huge amounts of time.

Crisp clients already include: Sony, Ubisoft, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, LEGO, EA, Binweevils, Moshimonsters.

Web safety expert, Adam Hildreth, CEO Crisp Thinking, explains, "How do you protect Kids Online whilst still letting them chat?" 

•  Online environments for kids and teenagers rely on chat. But with millions of chat messages sent each day, how do you make sure that kids aren't being bullied or groomed by an online predator? Even if you could employ 1000's of people to look through chat messages, there are now so many that they would miss the vast majority of serious issues.

• Crisp Thinking, a UK technology company, was setup in 2005 to look at a way to solve this problem. Crisp created a new solution that wouldn't try to block every potentially bad word said but instead take a completely new approach that would profile the behavior of a person and be able to tell the difference between innocent children, cyber bullyies, online predators and other dangerous behaviors.

• Today Crisp's technology is integrated into 100's of the biggest Online Spaces for Kids and aims to offer the safest possible online experience possible without restricting chat too much for the well-behaved kids.

• Crisp has developed a new kind of profiling technology that looks at what every user says and does in real-time, to identify the users that pose a risk to children in online games and virtual worlds. Users that exert dangerous or negative behavior are flagged up immediately to expert Human Moderators, so that they can review the user profile, what has been said and then take appropriate action such as banning the account and reporting them to law enforcement.

• Crisp's technology uses data from Law Enforcement and Online Experts to learn about the latest vocabulary and tactics that are used by Children, Online Predators and Cyber Bullies; by using real world examples Crisp technology is always up-to-date.

• Crisp's technology is now used by Law Enforcement such as the Metropolitan Police to help them analyse the Chat Logs of suspected peadophiles. Crisp can look through 1000's of chat messages a second to quickly identify and prioritise all risks. 

Crisp's work with the Met Police

A groundbreaking partnership between law enforcers and Crisp, last month, saved the Metropolitan police hundreds of man hours by sifting through a dangerous paedophile's 5,000 web chats and identifying his vulnerable young targets.

The pilot project used Crisp's 'predator detection' software, its Kids & Teens program, which usually monitors live web chats, to quickly process six years' worth of online grooming history, police found on a 46-year-old sex offender's computer and flag up the girls - some as young as 10-years-old - he had targeted. 

Acting Detective Chief Inspector Noel McHugh, from the Met's Paedophile Unit, said: "The message is clear, we will use all lawful methods to capture paedophiles, and we are constantly looking for technological solutions to apprehend the most dangerous offenders and to safeguard the most vulnerable.  

"We faced a mammoth task in reading through over 5,000 logs, some running to pages. For an officer to manually read every page would have taken a considerable amount of time."

Adam Hildreth invented Crisp's behaviour analysis technology in 2005 as an antidote to simple keyword filtering, which frequently blocks innocent online interactions and consequently drives young users to less restrictive websites that potentially put them in danger.

More information on this case:  http://content.met.police.uk/News/Paedophile-jailed-for-online-grooming/1400008079797/1257246741786

Notes to Editor:

- Independent tests by Cambridge University found Crisp technology to be 98.4% accurate in identifying online predators looking for victims, as well as harassment and spamming.

About Crisp

• Crisp Thinking is a UK based privately held company, established in 2005
• Crisp technology is 98.4% accurate in identifying online predators looking for victims, harassment and spamming, according to independent tests by Cambridge University
• Crisp currently analyses over 600 million pieces of data for clients each month
• Crisp operates in multiple languages