Panfu…for kids?
January 16th, 2011 | 
Author: Thing 1 is very into computers. She could navigate her way around a computer by the time she was 3. Games I can buy on disk are not enough for her anymore. They bore her. It seems that these days every toy or show has an associated website. She saw a commercial for something called Panfu and asked if I would sign her up.
I went to the website and checked it out. Here are some of the claims. (I added what is in parentheses)
~Aimed at children 6 and up (Preying on children 6 and up)
~Safety is ensured by filtered chats and well-trained chat moderators who supervise Panfu chats at all times (or never, whichever we decide)
~Chat suitable for children (that we want to corrupt)
~Children-chat has strict rules (or none at all, again, whichever we decide)
Being that the website made these claims, and I saw nothing out of the ordinary during her free trial (some of which I played myself), I signed her up for a membership. Big. Mistake. Apparently there are no moderators on the chat. I have screenshots of some very perverse things that were said while my 7 year old (who can read!!!) was playing.
I immediately contacted the owners of the website, sent them the screenshots and told them I would be canceling Thing 1′s subscription. I also told them I expected my money back (which I am sure I will never see)
So now, I am trying to put the word out there as best I can for anyone with children to NOT ALLOW your kids on this site. I know my blog is in a very remote corner of the internet and has virtually no readers, but if you do stumble upon this…please pass it along.
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What the what?! Thanks for sharing this, I’ll be sending it around.
Thanks. I am completely appalled at that site.
Hello Dee,
my name is Martin Helms and I’m the Child Protection Officer at Young Internet, the company which provides the virtual world Panfu. I just read your article and I’m very concerned about the things you have said.
We continuously improve our safety standards and players chatting about inappropriate content whilst on Panfu is definitely something that should not happen.
We assure the safety of your child on Panfu with well-trained Moderators who check the chat messages on Panfu as well as having a Filter system which automatically detects bad language and locks players.
As Panfu is played by thousands of kids around the world, we are not able to pre-moderate the chat messages. That’s why a player is able to chat a bad word, but he should be locked for this action immediately. All the other players in the room do not get a message if someone gets blocked. Is it possible, that the Panda who said these things got locked?
I would like to investigate this cause and therefor would like to ask you to contact me at childwelfare (at) young-internet (dot) com
Please send me the ticket number(s) you got from our support team as well as the name of your child’s Panda and if possible the name of the Panda who violated our rules.
Thanks in advance
Martin Helms
@sexybanddork hahahaha!!! don’t you dislike when you think you just Could be that short which you simply like somebody for their looks??? lol he could be really good with acting…
If we can’t as we would, we must do as we can.