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`Adult' products easy for under 18s to buy: councilor

Underage shoppers can easily purchase adult products from a popular online shopping Web site, a Taipei City councilor said yesterday.

The Children's and Juvenile's Welfare Law (兒童及少年福利法) prohibits "providing restricted class merchandises to juveniles under the age of 18." The Regulations Governing the Rating System of Internet Content (電腦網路內容分級處理辦法) require administrators of Web sites with restricted class contents to add signs or captions warning "this page cannot be viewed by persons under the age of 18" on "the front page of the Web site or on each of the restricted class Web pages."

Taipei City Councilor Huang Hsiang-chun (黃向群) found that it was not that difficult to skirt the restrictions when he tested an online shopping Web site.

"I pretended to be a child, and logged onto the Web site with a fake name," Huang told a press conference yesterday. "I completed the transaction, and the merchandise was quickly sent to me by mail."

The sole "restriction" that Huang faced was a question asking if he was 18 or older.

"The only things they [the Web site] cared about were a mailing address, the addressee's name and payment," he said.

Most shopping Web sites accept either credit cards or money transfers, and the sender's identity is not checked at money transfer counters.

A Taipei City Police official at the press conference did not comment on Huang's claims, saying only that the legality of each case "should be left to prosecutors and judges to decide."
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