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From Monsters and Critics.com Tech News Leading Web 2.0 social networking service MySpace has this week revealed that it has seen a 400 percent increase in the amount of sexual miscreants prowling its online pages, reports the BBC news Web site. Specifically, News Corp.’s MySpace has reported that in excess of 29,000 convicted sex offenders in the US were found to be holding profile accounts through its hugely popular service, which is a significant jump from the 7,000 attributed to MySpace in May of this year. MySpace, which allows its 80 million international users to create Web pages for the hosting of personal blog entries along with audio and visual media, has said that the accounts of all those known to be sex offenders have been duly removed. "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," said MySpace following the recent filtering. As critics of social networking sites continue to call for improved user safety, particularly for children, various states across the US have been applying pressure to MySpace with regard to the release of crucial sex offender data. "The exploding epidemic of sex offender profiles on MySpace - 29,000 and counting - screams for action," commented Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal following MySpace’s latest figures. North Carolina’s Attorney General, Roy Cooper, is pushing for an official state law that would restrict a child’s access to social networking Web sites without first securing prerequisite permission from their parents. The minimum user age on MySpace is presently 14 years. Cooper further offers that such mandatory parental restriction would leave fewer children at risk from sexual predators because their numbers would be markedly reduced. © Copyright 2007 by monstersandcritics.com. This notice cannot be removed without permission. |