UK's first Net suicide pact

Britain's Home Office is urging Internet companies to make it tougher for people to access Web sites and chatrooms about suicide, The Guardian reports. "The move comes after two strangers forged Britain's first Internet suicide pact, dying side by side two days after making contact for the first time on a chatroom dedicated to discussions about suicide." Other countries, especially Japan, have seen some tragedies like this (see this at the BBC), so UK psychiatrists are concerned this incident may be the start of a trend in their country. What happened was the deaths in a car in a southeast London shopping center parking lot of two people who had nothing in common "before making contact on one of the most frequently-visited suicide chatrooms" but an "interest in computers and their history of depression." See also a Wired News series on assisted suicide online, leading with the fact that anyone can type "suicide" into any search engine window and find "a handful of pages where suicidal strangers counsel each other on the best way to die." [Thanks to QuickLinks for pointing the UK story out.]