There is concern a social networking site popular in Indigenous communities is being used for cyber bullying and to deal out payback between feuding families.

The Telstra-backed network Divas Chat has also been blamed for the suicide of a young man in a remote Northern Territory community.

Divas Chat is proving to be a hit in many communities where pre-paid mobile phones are still more popular than smartphones.

All that is needed to access the network is a Telstra phone and access to the 3G network.

Eileen Deemal-Hall from the NT Department of Justice says she is investigating cases of bullying, sexting and payback via Divas Chat.

She says there have been issues with the network in her own community.

"We actually had a young fella commit suicide because of the bullying that was happening on Divas Chat," she said.

"When we were working with specific communities, I was concerned about how they were using applications such as Divas Chat to cause family fights.

"It wasn't just between couples or siblings, it was whole families."

She says the network has been used as a form of payback between families.

"It has erupted on occasions to whole communities. We've worked with one community in particular whereby Divas Chat was used as a way for what we call cyber payback, going away from traditional payback... using Divas Chat to actually cause hurt to the other party.

"In some cases they were uploading faces of people that had passed, so it's causing a lot of distress in the community."

She says the Department of Justice has a team looking into the networking site and investigating cyber safety in Indigenous communities.

"On pre-paid mobiles it's free. It has a wider reach than for example just straight one-on-one texting," she said.

"If you were looking to bully somebody you would use Divas Chat as opposed to you just directly texting somebody."

Safety measures

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 5 seconds 4 m 5 s Divas Chat shape communication in remote communities ( Clare Rawlinson ) Download 1.9 MB

Telstra does not regulate Divas Chat itself but says safety measures are in place and users must twice confirm they are over 18 before gaining access to the network.

Darwin blogger and researcher Kishan Karrippanon has taken a special interest in the use of communications technology in remote communities.

He was also one of the first to sound the alarm about what can go wrong when social networking goes unchecked.

"It is like the Indigenous version of Facebook. It is the social networking site for young people in remote communities to get in touch," he said.

"One day I bumped into this man from East Arnhem Land and we started chatting about the use of mobile phones in remote communities and I decided to ask the question and asked him what he thought of Divas Chat.

"His response was, 'are you looking for girls, because you could find girls on Divas Chat'."

The Australian Federal Police are also concerned.

Patrick Kelly, the AFP's youth adviser for high-tech crime operations, says they are trying to educate Indigenous communities about the risks.

"This is what some people call sexting, and it's when a person under the age of 18 sends a sexual text message so if we send that around, under the law we could be charged with child pornography, so it's very serious," he said.