Citing Progress, MySpace Says 90,000 Sex Offenders Blocked From Site

MySpace continues to use their "entrapment scheme" to log any registered sex offender (RSO) who trys to setup an account on MySpace. While MySpace has verbally made claims that it does not want RSOs on their website, MySpace has yet to amend their Terms of Agreement (TOA) to alert any possible RSOs that may want to establish an account, that doing so is against MySpace Policy: Entrapment.

Why do they do this? To keep their name in the news, it is another use of sex offender information, this time for marketing purposes. Change the TOA and instead of logging the RSO as attempting to setup and account, tell them up front, something that is not being done today.

Finally, there is no real reason why RSOs cannot use MySpace, except the FALSE PREMISE that they may speak with a minor who has an account. The powers that be ignore the recent study which shows that minors are acting responsibly and not making their information available to the world, they are keeping it private which prevents anyone from seeing or accessing it.

The Attorneys General requesting information are also making false claims against RSOs in general, in the past when those same AGs were provided information from the 36,000 RSOs previously deleted, coould not come up with ONE that had improperly contacted a minor which on MySpace. AGs are also using RSOs to make a name for themself (Note the one mentioned below is trying to get elected as the California Attorney General).

2-3-2009 National:

Update: Some of these sex offenders are showing up on Facebook.

Responding to a subpoena from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, MySpace today is handing over the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders who have been identified and blocked from the social networking site over the past two years.

Kicking sex offenders off the site has been a big priority for MySpace. A year ago, it struck a child protection deal with 49 states, which put in place a series of safety measures such as policing the site for predatory content and removing any known sex offenders (which it had already been doing on its own). As a result of its efforts, MySpace says that 36 percent fewer registered sex offenders are now trying to become members.

The new disclosures come amid claims and counterclaims of just how big a problem sexual predators are on MySpace, and social networks in general. For instance, a Hong Kong company being sued by MySpace recently hired a private investigator who claims to have found sex offenders still active on the site, despite MySpace’s attempts to remove them. While a report sponsored by MySpace and other companies found the threat to children on social networks overblown.

The KIDS Act of 2007, which was signed into law last October, requires that sex offenders register their real email and IM accounts with the National Sex Offender Registry. Similar legislation has also been passed in 20 states, making it a parole violation not to comply. This information is supposed to help social networks like MySpace and Facebook keep registered sex offenders off their sites.

MySpace uses software it helped to develop called Sentinal SAFE to run its member profiles against a database of more than 700,000 known sex offenders. The technology ties together all the various state sex offender registries. It compares 120 different points of identification—including name, date of birth, photo, scars, and tattoos—to make a positive match and block those members from registering again. The Sentinal software is how MySpace identified those 90,000 blocked sex offenders. ..News Source.. by Erick Schonfeld