HOUSTON -- A crackdown on chat rooms aimed at children is being felt around the world, affecting those that have nothing to do with sex, the Local 2 Troubleshooters reported Thursday.

Hundreds of innocent chat rooms were taken offline by Yahoo in addition to those targeted for sex with children.

Now, those innocent computer users are wondering how they will fill the massive void on the Internet.

National newspapers, radio talk shows and television networks have picked up the story the Troubleshooters broke on Monday. For people in other cities, it finally shed light on why chat room screens are blank.

---

Video: Computer Users Angry Over Chat Room Shut Down

---

But that's no help to people who have nowhere to turn for important information they've always received from clean chat rooms.

"It's not right. It's not right. And Yahoo needs to address this quickly," said Rod Mitchell, a local chat room creator.

Mitchell hosted a chat room called "Indiefilmworkers" for casting and crew on movies for eight years. That's all changed for the Spring man and the 869 other members of his chat room forum.

"A lot of times, they like to get insight. If they're in Austin, San Antonio, New York, they want to find out about Houston, and so they'll chat with each other. They can no longer do that," Mitchell said.

The same hole in the Internet exists for hundreds of other rooms with a wide array of interests, from hobbies to jobs to studies.

That's because the nation's most-used Internet site, Yahoo, shut down hundreds, potentially thousands, of chat rooms after the Local 2 Troubleshooters exposed what's really going on in those rooms.

They're called "user-created rooms." Local 2 found Yahoo displaying advertising from major corporations in rooms geared only toward sex with children.

9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex
Younger Girls 4 Older Guys
Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys
Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man
Girls 8 to 13 Watch Boys (In A Particular Sex Act)

In those rooms, Local 2 posed as a 13-year-old girl and Houston men lined up at the Troubleshooters' door after arranging sex meetings. Countless men tried to display pornography with children.

The big sponsors pulled their advertising because of the station's reports and Yahoo removed all of the rooms, leaving nothing but blank screens where the rooms used to be.

"People are irate and don't know where to go. They are casual Internet users," said Peter Carr, with Chatmag.com.

Carr runs a Web site called www.ChatMag.com, which is a registry of chat rooms and advice. He said hundreds of thousands of chat room users are logging in, wondering how to adjust their whole lives.

"A lot of them feel betrayed that Yahoo did not give them prior warning," Carr said.

Yahoo is still not commenting, saying only that it is working on improving chat rooms so that more users comply with Yahoo's terms of service, which ban harmful material with minors.

Online ads account for most of Yahoo's revenue, and investors are noticing. They are clicking on links to the Troubleshooters story, posted on various stock-quote Web pages.

Yahoo's stock dropped 70 cents Thursday, a decline of 2 percent.