Edit:

I might pay attention to this post about forum owners potentially being responsible for content [webmasterworld.com] as well. I don't know if anyone will have a great answer for that OP, but it might give you some guidelines/ideas. To be honest, I cannot say what will happen for sure being as there are 3 countries who could claim jurisdiction in this instance. I should think the US and Australia would bow out and allow the UK to handle everything, but you never know!

Best of luck to you!

[edited by: HugeNerd at 9:56 pm (utc) on Nov. 12, 2008]

Provided this is an isolated incident, you are unlikely to find yourself in any trouble with UK authorities. Just provide whatever information is requested, i.e. cooperate.

Since the protagonists are based outside the US, it seems unlikely that authorities there will take much interest.

Similarly, unless the UK asks Australian authorities to investigate (which I doubt if you cooperate) it won't even register on their radar.

Of course, if there is some aspect of your site that makes it particularly suitable for perverts, you should already be considering what changes are required but it sounds like a simple case of the girl lying rather than the bloke so you should be in the clear.

Kaled.

[of course having s*x with her would be a different matter]

I would be surprised if you are even contacted by the authorites. Seeing as they already have his computer.

I used to work for a dating site and the way our dev guys dealt with the problem was to allow users to state the age was under 18 (to stop them from lying) but then to "ghost" those users - no one else on the site would see them, no messages would ever get to them and none of their messages reached their destination (even though they appeared to be sent). They ended up thinking the site was crap and going elsewhere. If you're worried about this sort of thing happening again, you might want to look into doing something like that.