Here we go again...

USA Today has posted an article by one Wendy Koch which states that predators are meeting children online through the use of such consoles as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and believe it or not, even the Wii. Yes, the same Wii that has no voice chat and minimizes in-game interactions between the people playing them, utilizing layers of Friend Codes on top of that. That Wii.

"Child predators are migrating from traditional methods to alternate media. They are going to places where children are," says Michigan State Police Detective Lt. Thomas Kish in the article, adding that predators view the games which allow kids to access the internet and text message as a "foot in the door."

Some instances cited are a man who used World of Warcraft (notably not a console game) to lure a 12 year old girl into having sex with him (and was later given a 10-year sentence), and a 10-year old boy receiving a video while "playing the Halo Xbox game" (might they have meant Halo 3 for the Xbox 360?) which showed a man engaged in a sexual act.

Lt. Jessica Farnsworth, field commander of the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, says that her office has seized many Xbox machines for investigation, and received training from Microsoft at national conferences on how to extract text messages and other data from them.

One commenter addresses parents, telling them, "Don't get your young kid (under 15) a PS3 or 360, get them a Wii. I am 28 and game on the PS3 and the amount of swearing and inappropriate language I hear on that system is unbelievable. I'm sure you can set parental controls and all but your kids can break into that, especially a tech savvy one. There's almost no way to communicate through the Wii (unless you meet the person online, on a computer first) so it's a bit safer and the games tend to be more kid-oriented."

On a final note, clever tactic by USA Today, slipping the term "porn" in the URL for some added attention.