There’s a new video chat in town called Chatroulette. It’s a website that randomly selects a stranger somewhere in the world to share a live webcam connection. Once you are connected. you can talk verbally over the video cam or chat. Once you are bored with that person, you click “next” and the program finds another random stranger. No software download is required and there is no registration required either.

Although the site disclaimer says you need to be at least 16 to play, the site does not even try to verify your age. The “fun” in this site is that you never know who will be on the other end of the web cam. That doesn’t sound like much fun to me. The last thing I’d want is for my son, who would be underage, to get on this site, try it out and then find someone doing something very inappropriate on the other end.

Beware of this site and others that are like it. Take the initiative to protect your family by setting ground rules about use of this site. If it is a site that you don’t want visited in your home, set your Internet filter to block the site.