Katie Jones (born 1971) created the Internet chat site UKChat. After studying music at Cambridge, she joined MSN in 1995 and helped launch its community pages. She later moved on to AOL. In 1997, she launched UKChat. It shutdown in 2007.
Jones has written extensively on Internet safety, including pieces for The Guardian. She lives in Redmond, WA.
In 2000, Jones became embroiled in a notable web controversy when an American girl, Katie Tarbox, published a book about what happened when she became the victim of an Internet sexual predator. The publishers, Penguin Putnam, called the book Katie.com. The Internet domain http://www.katie.com/ had belonged to Katie Jones since 1996. Jones protested but the publishers stood their ground. Internet privacy advocate Parry Aftab asked Jones to donate the domain to a cybersafety charity or redirect traffic from young readers, who might think the domain related to the book, to the charity site. According to Jones, "She then got quite aggressive and said things would 'only get worse' for me if I didn't give it up." [1][2] Jones did not have the resources to engage in a lengthy legal battle but the controversy continued. In 2004 Penguin Putnam decided to rename the book.