The unofficial investigation highlights fears that the networking site, used by many adult entertainment and mainstream entities for marketing purposes, isn’t doing enough to protect children from online attacks.
One match revealed the profile of a San Bruno man with an otherwise innocuous MySpace page. But according to his profile in California’s online database of registered sex offenders, the man has been convicted of “forced sodomy, oral sex and lewd and lascivious acts,” all with a person under the age of 14.
A second match unmasked a 22-year-old convicted child molester.
None of the profiles appeared to have minors listed as “friends” on their pages. However, all but one of the seven matches (five confirmed, two probable) found men who had been convicted of sex offenses involving minors.
MySpace has taken fire of late for not doing enough to protect children on its site.
One third of MySpace’s staff works full-time to scan the site for images and postings that violate the company’s terms of service, and the company recently hired former Microsoft child online safety expert Hemanshu Nigam as its new security chief.
“The Internet will never be 100 percent safe for all kids, all the time,” Joan Irvine, executive director for the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, said. “Technical advances and legal issues make that impossible. [P]arental involvement remains a crucial factor. Know what your kids are up to, take advantage of available filtering technology and use common sense. No technical fix or new law can replace that.”
Still, the article went on to suggest that MySpace could be doing more.
“On the surface, the ease with which these profiles can be located seems to undermine MySpace's claims to be cracking down on sex offenders on its servers,” the article said.
However, MySpace may not be able to take full advantage of technology in this case.
“It's not against the law, to be on the site itself, not unless they're prohibited by probation or parole,” Inspector Jim Zerga of the San Francisco Police Department, was quoted as saying in the article.
Still, Wired News harshly criticized the site for allowing users to register without proving verifiable contact information. As the article points out, any registered sex offender can use the site under an alias for illegal purposes.