This leaflet deals with how children can use chat services safely when talking to friends they may not know in the real world. All our chatrooms are carefully monitored to listen for people trying to make inappropriate contacts with young people.

Mobile phones are valuable. When they get stolen, children are often the victims. Our leaflet on phone crime gives tips on how to avoid drawing attention to themselves when using their phones, and alerting them to the dangers around them.

Our campaign with Milly's Fund in the UK is designed to help parents and carers to stay in touch with young people in a safe and unobtrusive way. We have printed leaflets and run text clinics in shopping centres around the UK.

In the UK we run a nuisance call bureau. Employees within this operation work closely with the agencies that monitor our chatrooms to make sure they are not being used by people trying to make inappropriate contact with young people. The trained moderators also listen for children who are distressed, referring them to agencies like the Samaritans.

Operators in the UK and Ireland have developed codes of practice for the responsible and secure use of mobile services. We are proposing a similar code in Germany. The UK code covers visual content, online gambling, mobile games, chatrooms and internet access. Certain commercial information will be classified as 18 and users will need to prove that they are old enough before being allowed access to this content. Parental controls will also be made available for internet content. We are developing age verification processes so we can ensure proper controls under the UK code. These controls will be relevant and useful in other future contexts such as location services, gambling, betting, lottery and e-money transactions. We aim to implement the UK code by December 2004.