A website has removed a confidential email service where paedophiles can ask for help following criticism from children's charities when it was exposed by SocietyGuardian earlier this week.

ChatNannies has also taken down the names of two children's charities which appeared on its page appealing for sponsors and pledging to give 10% of any donation to the NSPCC and Barnardo's . The link to the page on its main menu seeking donations has also disappeared.

But the website, set up a month ago by husband and wife Jim and Eleanor Wightman from Coven near Wolverhampton, is still appealing for people to work as "chatnannies" in internet chatrooms for young people.

Although the internet watchdog regulator Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has issued a general warning to individuals interested in either working for or using services offered on the web, it has reiterated that it does not have any statutory power to investigate individual sites which may be causing concern.

Peter Robbins, IWF's chief officer, said: "We do not assess, advocate or endorse any specific types of free or commercial internet safety/filtering programmes, software or services such as monitoring of websites and chatrooms."

The IWF does however provide an internet hotline for the public to report any illegal images used on the internet.

A spokeswoman said: "It isn't for us to comment on the way that a site is set up or what we think about the way it advertises for people. There isn't an organisation which is set up to vet or assess these kind of organisations. Possibly there should be."

The children's charity Barnardo's approached ChatNannies to remove its name from the appeal for sponsors page after it was alerted by SocietyGuardian.

A spokeswoman said: "After some investigation it was discovered that the owners of the site had not approached Barnardo's to discuss the use of the charity's name therefore we asked them to remove it. This has now been done."

The NSPCC said its internet safety adviser Christine Atkinson is a member of IWF. A spokeswoman said: "We are concerned enough [about this website] to know that it is being looked at. It is something which needs to be looked into."

Mrs Wightman said 6,000 people had registered as chatnannies. She admitted that the couple did not vet any of the volunteers to ensure they were suitable to look after children, they liaise with them via email and do not have telephone contact numbers for them.

She said it was possible that a tiny number of the recruits could be paedophiles but said there was no vetting process because the couple did not think they could effectively screen them out. Instead they were relying on "concerned individuals like ourselves".

The Wightman's were not available for comment today.