MySpace: a place for predators
After one too many cases of sexual predators meeting with children, attorney Generals from Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania have asked MySpace, the Internet’s largest social networking site, to turn over its names of registered sex offenders, and to explain exactly what they’ve been doing to keep predators from using its service.
“We have identified more than 200 cases from across the country where sexual predators have lured children through MySpace,” North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said in a statement.
Last December, MySpace partnered with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to build a database with information on U.S. sex offenders. In addition, MySpace recently launched software to identify and delete sex offenders from using the site.
But Cooper isn’t satisfied. “MySpace can certainly take its own action to remove those sex offender profiles from their site,” Cooper said. “They say they are doing that but we want to know … exactly what steps they are taking.”
But the AGs think MySpace isn’t doing all they could about the situation. In a letter to Myspace, the attorney general said, “It is our understanding that the data from Sentinel reveals that thousands of known sex offenders have been confirmed as MySpace members.”
Cooper is currently in legislation with the North Carolina General Assembly to make it a felony for registered sex offenders to use social networking sites.
However, no system in the world is going to keep predators off Myspace; a user can sign up with total anonymity as all that’s required is an e-mail address.
Myspace has until May 29th to comply with the AGs to be in full compliance but noted: “We are in the initial stages of cross referencing our membership against Sentinel’s registered sex offender database and removing any confirmed matches,” Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace’s chief security officer, said in a statement.
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