Yahoo has removed and barred user-created chat rooms with names like “Teen Girls for Older Fat Men” that could encourage adults to solicit sex with minors, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday.

has removed and barred user-created chat rooms with names like “Teen Girls for Older Fat Men” that could encourage adults to solicit sex with minors, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday.

The Sunnyvale, California-based Internet media company reached an agreement, the first of its kind, with the New York and Nebraska attorneys general to establish rules regarding such chat rooms.

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As a result, Yahoo will pre-screen all user-created chat room names so that any names endorsing or encouraging sex between adults and minors won’t be posted. If such chat rooms still appear, the company will have 24 hours to remove them. The agreement also requires Yahoo to prioritize complaints regarding child safety by putting specific employees in charge of the process.

Shares of Yahoo were up $0.24 to $34.34 in recent trading.

New York and Nebraska started investigating the issue earlier this year after they received information that children had unregulated access to adult chat rooms on Yahoo’s sites. In June, Yahoo shut down about 70,000 user-created chat rooms with names suggestive of sex between adults and minors, which is illegal (see Yahoo Shuts Many Chat Rooms).

Several of these chat rooms, with names like “Girls 13 and Under for Older Guys,” were in the “Schools and Education” and “Teen” categories.

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As part of the agreement, Yahoo will donate $175,000 to the NationalCenter for Missing and Exploited Children’s affiliates in New York and provide the organization with banner advertising. It will also carry educational material about using chat rooms safely on the Yahoo network.

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Further Steps

Yahoo spokesperson Mary Osako said the company planned to do more.

“Yahoo is taking further steps to enhance user safety by restricting Yahoo Chat to users 18 and older and removing the Teen category,” said Ms. Osako. “Yahoo will continue to strongly support law enforcement in their work, as well as continue to provide support for several nonprofit organizations committed to online safety.”

The statement from Mr. Spitzer’s office cited the experience of an investigator who posed as a 14-year-old girl during the inquiry. Within 25 minutes, he received 35 sexual messages from individuals who seemed to be members of adult chat rooms.