90,000 sex offenders removed from MySpace

[Tricia Lea]

MySpace: 90,000 sex offenders removed from site
MARLON A. WALKER

The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. - About 90,000 sex offenders have been identified and removed from the social networking Web site MySpace, company and law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

The number was nearly double what MySpace officials originally estimated last year, said North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, who along with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has led efforts to make social networking Web sites safer for young users.

Cooper said he wasn't surprised by the updated numbers, and demanded that MySpace and rival online networking site Facebook , which claim to have more than 280 million users combined , do more to protect children and teenagers.

"These sites were created for young people to communicate with each other. Predators are going to troll in these areas where they know children are going to be," Cooper said. "That's why these social networking sites have the responsibility to make their sites safe for children."

The attorneys general received agreements last year from MySpace and Facebook to push toward making their sites safer. Both sites implemented dozens of safeguards, including finding better ways to verify user's ages, banning convicted sex offenders from using the sites and limiting the ability of older users to search members under 18.

Blumenthal, who received MySpace's updated numbers Tuesday through a subpoena, said the information "provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain rife with sexual predators." A preliminary number of sex offenders found on Facebook was "substantial," but he said the company has yet to respond to a recent subpoena.

MySpace executives said they were confident in the technology they use to find, remove and block registered sex offenders. The company uses Sentinel SAFE, a database it created in 2006 with the names, physical descriptions and other identifiable characteristics of sex offenders that cross-references against MySpace members.

"Sentinel SAFE is the best industry solution to ensure these offenders are removed from social networks," Hemanshu Nigam, the company's chief security officer, said in a statement Tuesday.

MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has more than 130 million active users worldwide.

A spokesman for Facebook, which claims more than 150 million active users, said Tuesday that protecting its users has always been a priority.

"We have a policy prohibiting registered sex offenders from joining Facebook," said spokesman Barry Schnitt. "We are glad to be able to report that we have not yet had to handle a case of a registered sex offender meeting a minor through Facebook. We are working hard to make sure it never happens."

Still, Cooper said more should be done.

"Technology moves forward quickly, and it's important for these companies to stay ahead of the technology," he said. "And they're not moving fast enough for us."

The push for better restrictions came during a time when social-networking Web sites were seeing exponential growth, with most of it coming in the form of younger users. But along with the younger members came sexual predators who would lie about their age to lure young victims.

Blumenthal and Cooper, who co-chair the State Attorney General Task Force on Social Networking, have led the charge for tougher restrictions to be placed on who joins online social-networking sites.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force report, commissioned by the attorneys general in 2008, researched ways to help squash the onslaught of sexual predators targeting younger social-networking clients. Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies, a report by the task force submitted to attorneys general in December, noted was no surefire way to guarantee online child safety.

The task force also played down fears of Internet sexual predators who target children on social-networking sites. While citing other dangers such as online bullying, the panel said cases of predators typically involved youths well aware they were meeting an adult for sexual activities.

But Cooper said the danger posed by sexual preditors online remains.

"Our law enforcement officers investigating these cases tell us that predators are soliciting children on the Internet and in social networking sites," Cooper said. "We're working to provide more law enforcement to protect our kids, but social networking sites and technology companies must do their part as well."

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I just wonder how they can tell whos who and know they are removing the right ones?

Dont get me wrong I am glad they are doing it but seems like it would be hard

[iridiscente]

At a family gathering a lady couldn't remember the names to these websites and was calling them "Myface" and "Spacebook"

[The Purple Fuzzy]

LOL, that sounds like my hubby.  He STILL calls a blackberry phone a blueberry.

[BeccaBoo]

[Sis]

Sandra and Dina. 

I wonder what they would think of me looking for the old youth group.  Ah, most are in college and married by now.

It' seems weird that nothing at home stayed the same as when I left it. It should have.

[World Traveler]

It was probably 90,000 instead of the expected 45,000 because they people probably just joined right back up under another name as soon as they realized they were dumped and then they had to be dumped off the website all over again.

[CDAGeek]

Possibly, but it did say 90k sex offenders, not 90k accounts.

[Sis]

I knew there were a lot on those places but that number is just

[The Purple Fuzzy]

But if you've ever searched for anyone that you know, there are lots of folks with the same name.  I wonder how they sorted all that out...

[CDAGeek]

names, physical descriptions and other identifiable characteristics of sex offenders that cross-references against MySpace members.

Looks like they go off a lot more than just name. If anything they probably err on the side of caution - could you imagine the lawsuit of they accused someone wrongly of being a sex offender in such a public manner?

[Sis]

I'm sure they followed them all the way down to their provider. An admin or an owner of a site can do that, so I'm sure the feds could, too.

[Amelia Bedelia]

still have to watch out for all those that don't have a record yet...

[CDAGeek]

Sad, but true. How many more of those millions have either never been caught, or just haven't committed their first offense yet? It's a scary world, and the internet does not make it any less so.