Durham gamer calls for tougher action to block sinister users on consoles
39-year-old Carl Robinson found dozens of inappropriate usernames while playing on his Playstation.
A Durham gamer wants to see tougher measures in place to filter out Playstation users with inappropriate usernames.
39-year-old Carl Robinson from Sacriston was on his Playstation when a user with a name alluding to child abuse appeared in the game he was playing.
After searching similar names to this one, he found dozens of inappropriate user names alluding to not only abuse, but child pornography.
Carl has fears the users could have sinister intentions.
He said:
"There's no doubt in my mind that most of those usernames are there with the intention of doing something sinister.
"I personally can't prove that, but it seems it's just not good enough.
"I know there are kids on there younger than 16 playing.
"What's to stop them sending a child a friend request and some children may not know what these usernames mean, and then you've possibly got paedophiles speaking to young children online."
He wants to more strigent filters in place to root out users with inappropriate names to keep children and other users safe.
Jonathan Stoker from Durham Constabulary Cybercrime Unit said:
"It's going to be awful if your child sees that name or anybody sees it really, it will give you that knot in the stomach of 'what is this person after?'
"Report it to the particular organisation that you're playing with and they will try their hardest to take down that user."
We contacted Sony, who sent us this statement:
"PlayStation takes its social responsibilities extremely seriously. All of our 110 million Network users have agreed to terms and conditions when creating their account: www.playstation.com/legal/PSNTerms.
"We have filters in place to prevent creation of account names using profane terms. Sometimes accounts can be created using individually inoffensive words which combine to cause offence or imply something illegal - as in these cases.
"We have reporting functionality available for users who encounter such names to report them and a moderation team which reviews all reports and takes action where names are in breach of our terms (as in this case). "We have checked all the account names you brought to our attention. All of the accounts were already banned for breach of our Terms because the names had come to our attention previously.
"Banned accounts cannot connect to our Network: the account holder cannot log in to or use the account in any way so they cannot communicate with anyone and no one can communicate with them."