MySpace cleans their user base by removing 29,000 sex offenders
July 25th, 2007 Leave a comment Visited 32 times, 1 so far today
MySpace cleans their user base by removing 29,000 sex offenders
Online social networking giant MySpace.com has announced that they have now removed profiles of around 29,000 sex offenders from their service.
Incidentally, this figure is around four times their initial estimate of sex offenders who are members of the online service.
The company had said earlier this year that they had deleted about 7,000 user profiles that belonged to convicted offenders.
MySpace.com is one of the more popular websites on the web and it attracts about 60 million unique visitors monthly in the United States.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement on this new development: “The exploding epidemic of sex offender profiles on MySpace — 29,000 and counting — screams for action.”
MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam had this to say: “We’re pleased that we’ve successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead.”
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July 25th, 2007 at 7:18 am
More media hysterics thrown at the public by “legal professionals!!” What else can be so misleading to the public when this “exploding epidemic of sex offenders” is a far cry from the truth.
My space states it has over 60 million million unique visitors monthly in the USA alone. In reality, the number of sex offenders is such a vastly remote number, the chances of any sex offender making contact via my-space is next to nil. All this is is another “feel-good, knee-jerk” operation fed to an unknowing public that makes both “my-space” and law enforcement look as it is doing real prevention of cyber crimes. In fact, your child stands a better chance to be hit by a car or lightning than having contact with a sex offender.
Additionally, the terror tactics of the individual states attorneys to “force” my-space and any other social networks is just another blatant violation of sex offenders civil rights without just cause. This terror machine called government and law enforcement, expecting such social networks to comply, will in the long run, without opposition, remove the same civil rights of “ordinary” citizens. This is against the first amendment rights of all members of society. If an offender is under legal sanction, and has explicite orders not to join or visit any social network, the prohibition would then be legal. Once off sanction, these rights return to the offender as inalienable rights inherent to all members of society upon birth without government interference.
Allow the government and legal representatives to continue with this violation of rights, speaks volumes where all our rights are concerned.
July 26th, 2007 at 6:25 am
In the wake of this MySpace news, it’s important that parents realize banning social networking is not the answer; the key is educating themselves on the industry and learning about how their children can experience this integral part of their future in a positive and secure environment. For example, imbee.com (my client), was really the first youth-oriented social network to address safety right up front. They authenticate its members, offer a built in parental dash board, keep its kids personal information private and only allows kids to publish to their approved circle of friends. None of the other social networks, including MySpace, were ever intended to support members under the age of 13. In other words, tweens who aspire to be like teens have other social networking outlets available to enable them to learn to be good Internet citizens in lieu of being left behind on the digital highway or the more likely occurrence of MySpacing at friend’s houses.