National News
Crimes linked to dating sites fall in first half of year amid spread of filtering services
The number of matchmaking site-related crimes detected by police in the first half of 2008 was down more than 14 percent compared with the same period last year, a police report has shown.
In the first six months of the year, police uncovered 777 crimes linked to matchmaking Web sites, a 14.3 percent drop compared with the same period the previous year, according to a National Police Agency (NPA) report.
The number of victims also dropped sharply to 420, a 40.7 percent decrease compared to the first half of 2007.
"This appears to be due to a spread of filtering services that block access to sites containing harmful information," said an NPA official commenting on the lower figures.
A total of 356 of the victims were aged under 18 -- 248 fewer than during the same period in 2007. Of these, 113 were junior high school students and 154 were high school students.
As a countermeasure against use of matchmaking sites, cell phone carriers and other related businesses have promoted the use of Web site filtering services. An investigation by the Telecommunications Carriers Association showed that in September 2007 there were about 2.1 million people using filtering services, but by March this year the figure had increased to about 3.43 million users.
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(Mainichi Japan) August 8, 2008