Officials: MySpace finds 29,000 sex offenders on it
AP WorldStream. 07/24/07
Raleigh, North Carolina - MySpace.com has found more than
29,000 registered U.S. sex offenders with profiles on the popular
social networking Web site -- more than four times the number cited
by the company two months ago, North Carolina officials said
Tuesday.
North Carolina's Roy Cooper is one of several state attorneys
general who recently demanded the News Corp.-owned Web site provide
data on how many registered sex offenders were using the site,
along with information about where they live.
After initially withholding the information, citing federal
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.
Two MySpace spokeswomen did not immediately return calls seeking
comment Tuesday.
Cooper is pushing for legislation that would require children to
receive parental permission before creating social networking
profiles, and require the Web sites to enact procedures for
verifying the parents' identity and age.