Now you can find the creeps with ChatRouletteMap

Hopefully, this doesn’t herald the end of the ChatRoulette party.
A mashup called ChatRouletteMap pins screenshots of the site’s users to a map. Now this doesn’t collect every single one of ChatRoulette’s users. It looks like a person built a program that has connected with more than two thousand ChatRoulette players and used their IP addresses (which are revealed on the service) to identify where they were and then took a screenshot. (I’ve contacted the people behind ChatRouletteMap and am waiting to hear back.)
ChatRoulette is an explosively popular anonymous video chat service created by a 17-year-old student in Moscow named Andrey Ternovskiy. When you log on, it pairs you with a random person from somewhere else in the world and you instantaneously connect with them through your web cam. The anonymity is part of the fun: because no one knows who you are and there’s little chance you’ll ever meet them in real life, you’re free to do almost anything in from of your computer. Of course, a small percentage of the site’s users have taken the liberty to expose themselves, so there ends up being a lot of explicit content on the site. That’s the roulette part.
Some ChatRoulette fans are fighting back: a vigilant user built this application. You run the app at the same time you play ChatRoulette. If something inappropriate comes up, you can flag it and your conversation partner’s location will be pinpointed in real-time based on their IP address. The app also lets you copy that data, so you can paste it in the chat and let them know they’ve been tracked.
Will this mean fewer pervs on the service? I doubt it, but perhaps some people will think twice.
[Via Laughing Squid]
Companies: chatroulette, chatroulettemap
People: Andrey Ternovskiy