An unwanted invasion of space: Myspace

Social Web forums like Myspace take socializing to a new level. The online world never sleeps and catching up with friends can be accomplished with a short messaging blitz that lasts ten minutes. Myspace users can create profiles, view other user profiles, message each other, network, blog, share media, and create or join online groups. Socializing has never been so easy.

For predators, finding victims has also never been so easy. If the Internet is a sea, then online sexual predators are the sharks and Myspace users are a shiny school of fish.

We need to demand that the webmasters of online social forums make efforts to protect their users when they can. Especially for Web sites like Myspace where the majority of users are younger and more vulnerable. You wouldn’t purchase something from eBay if it wasn’t secure enough to handle your transactions. You shouldn’t let your children use Myspace if they webmasters don’t block high-risk registered sex offenders from their Web site.

The webmasters of Myspace have acknowledged this as a concern. In December, they responded to criticisms that hundreds of registered sex offenders had active profiles on their Web site. They employed Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to create a database and an automated system that would identify and flag any user profiles that belonged to registered offenders. Those profiles would then be deleted by Myspace’ employees.

Myspace claimed that its system would be effective within 30 days. We are three months past that deadline.

A quick personal investigation by myself, involving nothing more than a basic name search, proved that their system is not yet working. Using New Jersey’s State Internet Registry for sex offenders, I easily found eight profiles that were suspected matches. I stopped looking after that. All eight profiles were created under the names of registered sex offenders, all had photos matching those on the registry and most profiles were active.

Keep in mind that NJ sex offenders who appear on the state’s Internet registry are only those who have a moderate-to-high perceived chance of re-offending. This means that despite Myspace’s efforts to remove sex offenders from its Web site, NJ’s most dangerous offenders are still on it.

New Jersey arguably has the toughest laws in the nation with regards to sex offenders. Thanks to 7-year-old Megan Kanka and the laws that were enacted in her name, sex offenders have to register themselves with state and local police, and community members are notified when an offender moves nearby.

Every week, it seems that another municipality enacts residency restrictions for sex offenders that prohibit them from living next to schools, day-care centers, parks, bus stops, and libraries. Some of these municipal laws make entire towns off-limits for sex offenders.

Despite all this legislation to keep sex offenders away, the Internet and Myspace in particular, can bring sex offenders into your home and closer to your children than ever before.

The waters of the online world are deep and fraught with dangers. Myspace needs to cast a better net to keep the sharks a safe distance away.