Update: Some of these sex offenders are showing up on Facebook.
Responding to a subpoena from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, MySpace today is handing over the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders who have been identified and blocked from the social networking site over the past two years.
Kicking sex offenders off the site has been a big priority for MySpace. A year ago, it struck a child protection deal with 49 states, which put in place a series of safety measures such as policing the site for predatory content and removing any known sex offenders (which it had already been doing on its own). As a result of its efforts, MySpace says that 36 percent fewer registered sex offenders are now trying to become members.
The new disclosures come amid claims and counterclaims of just how big a problem sexual predators are on MySpace, and social networks in general. For instance, a Hong Kong company being sued by MySpace recently hired a private investigator who claims to have found sex offenders still active on the site, despite MySpace’s attempts to remove them. While a report sponsored by MySpace and other companies found the threat to children on social networks overblown.
The KIDS Act of 2007, which was signed into law last October, requires that sex offenders register their real email and IM accounts with the National Sex Offender Registry. Similar legislation has also been passed in 20 states, making it a parole violation not to comply. This information is supposed to help social networks like MySpace and Facebook keep registered sex offenders off their sites.
MySpace uses software it helped to develop called Sentinal SAFE to run its member profiles against a database of more than 700,000 known sex offenders. The technology ties together all the various state sex offender registries. It compares 120 different points of identification—including name, date of birth, photo, scars, and tattoos—to make a positive match and block those members from registering again. The Sentinal software is how MySpace identified those 90,000 blocked sex offenders.
I think it’s great that MySpace is removing sex offenders from the site.
But the fact that they have to remove sex offenders gives MySpace a bad reputation. You don’t see Dateline stories about 40 year old men trying to pick up 12 year old girls on Facebook.
I believe MySpace’s popularity explosion and the subsequent illegal and disgusting uses of the site will ultimately be the reason that Facebook continues to outpace MySpace and becomes the undisputed top Social Networking Site.
“to remove sex offenders gives MySpace a bad reputation” Why? They are doing the right thing.
Do you think that it “offends” sex offenders?
You are insane.
I think it is a great thing they are removing them. MySpace deserves an award.
TG4MySpace others need to follow their method of eliminations of sex offenders from web sites.
HOW DID THIS START DID YOU PUT YOUNG GIRLS THERE OR IS IT THE LAW TO PUT THEM THERE ASK THEM ?
IMO, Facebook is actually worse because they are selling an illusion of safety without actually taking the same steps to protect their users. They just haven’t had their time in the press yet.
myspac will never be a serious business social site. fazebk is a fad for people in school. when people grow up and want to get serious about life they will gravitate to niche social sites that…….. as godaddy says “enhance” there online professional presence. myspac and fazebk will forever be seen as playgrounds for lazy school kids and 6 pack abs with music. whom ever “filters” and “strategically positions” social users the best will become the undisputed top social site.
ProfessionalLocator.com – enhance yourself
Because Dateline still thinks you have to be a college student to register.
And looks like they are all moving over there anyway.
If you read the NYT article on this, it states that the 90,000 were removed over a period of 2 years.
And you see Dateline stories about whatever Dateline decides to air a story about. The problem could be worse on Facebook, you can’t make an accurate assumption about something like that from what you’ve personally noticed on television.
Are you crazy! Are YOU a sex offender? Myspace is doing the right thing and ACTUALLY I just started getting creepy men trying to friend me on facebk. Looks like the found a new home and I hope facebk kicks them off too!!
This is a great move to improvement. I agree with Jason, this is making myspace look bad in a sense that other social media’s do not have this issue, but one problem at a time.
Facebook is a controlled space, they control the way things looks, stringent laws on excessive spamming and its community that sort of looks out for each other. Myspace on the other hand, put way too much control on the hands of users, but this is a good step nonetheless. Next step is to weed out all the coding issues, im sick of my browser hanging everytime i surf myspace.
cooljobsonline
http://tinyurl.com/7uj5ay
Wow. Who knew there were so many “registered sex offenders.” Think of the numbers of “unregistered sex offenders.”
I think MySpace’s problems started because it was easier to create pages under an alias to mask your identity. It was also the first social media site to explode onto the mainstream — so lots of protections that have now been developed didn’t exist.
Kudos on the effort, but it is frightening that there were 90K sex offenders on MySpace to block. Wow.
I think the removals make Myspace look better rather than bad. Bravo for them!
Facebook still has soooo many more bugs than Myspace (I use both), and in that respect, I still prefer Myspace. It’s much faster running and more versatile, and what of all the recent hacking reported about Facebook? They have a ways to go.
Karen
agree with karen that this makes Myspace look much better, i think it is progress at least these people aren’t on the site anymore. Myspace isn’t even the biggest social network now so there’s no way other sites don’t have these problems too.
kurt
I think that this is great progress for MySpace. MySpace took a huge beating in the press for this awhile back and it is nice to see that they are being recognized for kicking these guys off their site.
Nice. One question though: Where do you think all these people will be going other than MySpace? Really, is everyone that naive? No this is MySpace’s way of giving us false confidence. They’re hiding the “problem” instead of dealing with it. Discouraging use, rather than monitoring all those people, and perhaps prevent a crime. No just pass the “problem” along to someone else. Think about this for a second: As society grows more and more technologically interdependant, and the average age of these sex offenders goes down, perhaps they’d rather they, (the population of sex offenders) go about building their own websites, just for their needs. Things just got worse. Imagine herds of offenders hunting children in groups, technologically savvy predators. Where are the parents? Since when is it MySpace’s responsibility to babysit? Parents are responsible for their children’s internet usage, not MySpace. George is right. This only deals with the small fraction of criminals we know about, and gives rise to another question: Do we want criminals designing their own websites?
My friends have teens with accounts on myspace, facebook and bebo and the same issues are everywhere, i think myspace took most of the heat for this because they were first but now it seems like other sites should do what they are doing. i don’t think bebo is doing anything and you never hear facebook talk about safety. Does bebo or facebook delete these people? It would be real progress if every social site had to do the same thing.
Wait. 700,000 sex offenders? What the hell is going on? We have to be (stupidly) lumping harmless together with harmful. Is Pee Wee Herman a sex offender? Betcha he is. Is he dangerous? No.
“Preventive Justice” as opposed to the REAL Justice is the worst possible scenario for the human civilization development.
If people will be excluded from ANY aspects of life based on any grounds than the decisions of courts based on the Las – our country will become a banana republic very soon. In fact it has gone down this path a great deal in the last 8 years. Hopefully we will return to the more human state soon.
But have they blocked immensely annoying music from playing at five trillion decibels whenever you load a profile?
NO!
I’m so glad MySpace is doing something positive with their site. Removing all sex offenders will help many people. I can not believe there are so many registered sex offenders in this world!!
It’s very good for MySpace to remove sex offenders from the site. It makes myspace clean. … excellent… [2]
It’s great that the did this but doesn’t it open them up for blame if anyone ever does anything on MySpace to abuse a child? Seems that by banning these folks, they are taking charge (and therefore responsibility) of the issue.
Would sex offenders that did not want to be identified actually use their REAL NAME?
hey wht up it a cool site
very interesting!
there will be a lot more i’m sure.
Anyone over 18 with a MySpace profile needs their head examined anyway.
All felons are welcome at MyFelon.com. Even the good people of society(those not yet caught) are welcome.
Isn’t our new half-white President the son of a sex offender? Technically BO is the product of statutory rape and therefore the direct descendant of a sex offender.
Almost 3 quarters of a million known sex offenders, that’s a lot of users to avoid online. The fact they are on there is already done, all they can do at this point is their best to remove/report them. I check here to keep up to date on security issues.
from one site to the next
You know there are different types of sex ofenders. Not a lot have anything to do with childern, and some of the people are simpley not repersented by good concel and thn k it’s better to take a plea ,not knowing fully that they will be stuck with a sex ofender record the rest of their life. Then there has always been people around praying on childern and the most you’ll never know of, THIS WAS LONG BEFORE MYSPACE COME ALONG.
I believe if you keep your dirty clothes from being washed, they all stay dirty! These preditors, you’ll never actually get rid of them! It just won’t happen. I don’t think any site can actually do this although someone … somewhere has to pretend.
Actually the parents are the real problem. Sometimes they trust their children too much. Today is not the day to let them get into any site. As a matter of fact, any day. IF parents do not teach their child good from bad, these preditors will live on forever and ever. Fact … not fiction! Wake up parents. Guide your children into the light, not in the shallows of it!
You can’t protect your children from sexual preds they work at their school, at your church, etc. It’s an issue for parents to deal with but it’s not something they have 100% control over.
Citing progress? Please, all those predators are just going to find another site to peddle their nasty wares. Don’t believe me? http://www.poin.../myspace-of-sex