Shock over '29,000 sex offenders on MySpace' report

MySpace has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the popular social networking website – more than four times the number given by the company two months ago, two US states say.

The figure was released by the office of North Carolina attorney general Roy Cooper, who, along with several colleagues in other states, had demanded that the News Corporation-owned website provided data on how many registered sex offenders were using it, as well as information about where they lived.

After initially withholding the information, citing privacy laws, MySpace began sharing the information in May after the states filed formal legal requests.

At the time, MySpace said it had already used a database it helped create to remove about 7,000 profiles of sex offenders, out of a total of about 180 million profiles on the site.

Cooper’s office said, however, that the figure had now risen past 29,000.

“I’m absolutely astonished and appalled because the number has grown so exponentially over so short of time with no explanation,” said Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal.

MySpace would not comment on the figure, focusing instead on its efforts to clean up its profile rolls.

“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,” MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement.

Cooper is pushing for a state law that would require children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles and require the websites to verify the parents’ identity and age.

For example, social networking sites would have to compare information provided by a parent with commercial databases. Sites could also force parents to submit credit cards or printed forms.

Cooper is working with law enforcement officials in other states in pressuring MySpace to use age and identity verification methods voluntarily.

Based on media reports, Cooper’s office found more than 100 criminal incidents this year of adults using MySpace to prey or attempt to prey on children.

A Virginia man pleaded guilty on Monday to kidnapping and soliciting a 14-year old girl he met on MySpace.

“All we’re doing is giving parents the right to make a choice whether their children can go online,” Cooper told a state House of Representatives committee considering the Bill on parental involvement and verification. He said the measure would lead to “fewer children at risk, because there will be fewer children on those websites”.

Advocates for internet companies and privacy issues testified against the proposed restrictions, saying the broad parental verification standards would be found unconstitutional because they prohibited free speech or impeded interstate commerce.

Experts who testified also said Cooper’s idea was not foolproof, because children could fabricate their parents’ information and purported consent.

The parental verification requirement “makes promises to consumers that cannot be kept. It is dangerous language”, said Emily Hackett, executive director of the Washington-based Internet Alliance, whose clients include Time Warner’s AOL, Yahoo and VeriSign. “There is no way to eyeball a user.”

The Bill, which has already passed the North Carolina Senate, will now go to a House sub-committee for more consideration.