2-13-2009 Global:
At meeting of MySpace-formed task force, social networks show how kids are kept safe
MySpace is using technology to analyze whether potential users trying to sign up for the social network may be registered sex offenders, the company's chief security officer said Wednesday.
Hemanshu Nigam, who is also the CSO of Fox Interactive Media, described the new system and other measures taken by MySpace to protect children online during a meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force Wednesday at Harvard University. The task force was created by MySpace as part of a January agreement with a group of state attorneys general to beef up online safety at social networking sites.
The task force is charged with exploring and developing age and identity verification tools for social networking sites.
The task force was formed after a lengthy battle between 49 (minus Texas) of the 50 US state attorneys general and MySpace over turning over the names of registered sex offenders who had accounts on MySpace. In July 2007, MySpace said it had identified more than 29,000 registered sex offenders among its users. Facebook subsequently joined the task force and agreed to work with the AGs on bolstering online safety.
Nigam noted that the company's new Sentinel technology looks at various criteria - like names and images of known sex offenders - 24 hours a day to ensure they are not using the site.
"We have proactive, zero tolerance for sex offenders," he noted.
He noted that this method of aiming to identify potential predators before they have a chance to make contact with any other MySpace user is part of its new proactive approach at online safety.
"[We] don't just do 'notice and take down', but merge it and combine it with proactive measures," Nigam added. "That should be the ultimate goal - take care of [potential problems] before you get an email, a call or a complaint."
The company also reviews videos and photos uploaded to the site for nudity, pornography or overt violence, he added. MySpace is trying to deter users from adding such content to the site by telling those posting illicit videos or images that their IP address is logged and could be used in an investigation if the content is found to be illegal.
"We are looking for teachable moments," he added. "When your are uploading images or videos, we put up a warning to let you know that other people can see what you're putting up."
Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said via a video presentation from the meeting that one of the company's biggest advantages in the quest for online safety is that unlike MySpace, it requires that users use their real name to identity themselves on the site.
He went on to note that users choose who can view the information on their profiles, and that only 0.1 percent of the 100 million profiles on the site are publicly available to all other users.
For users under 18 who join groups, their profile is only available to other under-18-year-old users in that group, he added. "This provides a built-in neighborhood watch program for every user on the site," Kelly noted.
Like MySpace, Facebook has an automated system aimed at detecting potentially dangerous behavior. Called Karma, the system will flag suspicious behavior like a 34-year-old user attempting to befriend a 14-year-old or 15-year-old child.
He added that 100 percent of reports from users to Facebook about nudity posted to the site or harassment complaints are reviewed with 24 hours and resolved within 72 hours. Furthermore, users who are age 13 though 17 will have their account disabled if they send friend requests to other users who cannot verify that they know the minor, he added.
Kelly pointed to a Facebook poll of 500 13 to 17-years-old users that a majority had not seen nudity on the site, that they know most or all of the people they interact with.
Simon Axten, a privacy and public policy associate at Facebook, noted from the meeting that the site allows users to report suspicious behavior, which can help catch criminals who may fall through the cracks and not get flagged by the automated systems.
"We are constantly working on these systems," he noted. "We're still approaching this problem from a technical perspective. A challenge that we have is enforcing that real name culture or getting across to users how the site is to be used. There is some inclination to use the site on a pseudonym or fake name basis."
Richard Blumenthal, AG of Connecticut and co-chair of the group of AGs who have honed in on online safety, noted that anonymity on social networks is a real concern to law enforcement. MySpace, he added, has identified 50,000 child predators who have established profiles on the site using their own names.
"For all those 50,000, there are a lot more that don't use their real names," he said. "The anonymity of the Internet is one of the greatest threats law enforcement sees to apprehending and preventing criminal assaults."
However, he commended the task force for taking on the challenge of putting into place better online child protection measures. "It is a passion that has united AGs as I have never seen before in 18 years in my office," he added. "Other than the [anti] tobacco effort there has been no other multi-state task force that has attracted so much support and interest as this one." ..News Source.. by Heather Havenstein
February 13, 2009
MySpace, Facebook show tools to ward off child predators
February 3, 2009
Thousands Of MySpace Sex Offender Refugees Found On Facebook
Notice how quickly they share information, which came from the National Sex Offender registry, and which they had to promise they would not share, to gain access to that national data base. So much for federal laws to protect RSOs.
2-3-2009 National:
MySpace is in the spotlight today because it revealed that 90,000 registered sex offenders have been kicked off its site in the past two years. But where did all of those sex offenders go? Some evidence suggests that a portion of them are now on Facebook.
John Cardillo is a former New York City police officer and the CEO of Sentinel, a security technology firm based in Miami which helps MySpace, Bebo, MyYearbook, WePlay, and other social networks identify sex offenders. He goes so far as to call Facebook a “safe haven” for sex offenders. Needless to say, Facebook is not a client, and MySpace is his biggest one. But he shared some data with me that is hard to overlook.
Sentinel’s technology is the foundation for Sentinel SAFE, the software MySpace uses to identify sex offenders on its site. Sentinel SAFE is a database of more than 700,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., complete with names, photos, dates of birth, email and IM addresses (when available), and more than a hundred other data points. Cardillo took the 90,000 sex offenders who were removed from MySpace and started looking for them on Facebook. He says:We found over 8,000 offenders on their site without much effort. My professional opinion is that the real number is 15 to 20 times that.
The actual number of matches he found was 8,487. Rather than take his word for it, I have in my possession Cardillo’s spreadsheet with all the names. I also have about 100 mugshots of sex offenders along with their corresponding Facebook profile names and pictures. (I’ve reproduced four of the mugshots above). A spot check of the mugshots, which are publicly available, matched names and photos in the National Sex Offender Registry. Once I had the names, it was pretty easy to find them on Facebook as well.
It is theoretically possible that people other than the sex offenders themselves created these Facebook accounts. Although they would have had to go to great lengths to do so (creating false profiles, culling all known information about these offenders, finding credible snapshots of the same people for their profile photos, setting up false e-mail accounts, and repeating the process thousands of times). And it is not clear why anyone would want to create a fake sex offender profile on Facebook. But even if this doesn’t prove that the actual sex offenders themselves created these profiles, it may not really matter.--It is clear that MySpace and Facebook does not know the extent that vigilantes and vigilatee organizations will go to destroy a person, especially online where they can do so anonymously. In one noteable case the person so targeted, although not a RSO, actually committed suicide. Courts seem to dismiss even the case where a person ultimately died on questions of jurisdiction forgetting that the Internet is likened to the Wild West where there is no law and order.
In a deal with 49 state attorneys general last May, Facebook agreed to identify and remove “profiles of all registered sex offenders.” Presumably this policy covers all profiles on Facebook, regardless of who created them.
How much would it cost Facebook to license the Sentinel screening technology? I asked Cardillo, and he said “fractions of a penny per user.” With 150 million users, he said that would come to under $1 million.
It could be even cheaper for Facebook to develop its own software to check official state sex offender registries, something it has proposed doing in the past. Maybe this home-grown system is already in place. But judging from the matches that Cardillo found, Facebook’s sex offender detection system needs some work. Several groups are already popping up on Facebook itself with names like Get Child Molestors Off Facebook (11,761 members).
I’ve contacted Facebook, and have been told they will respond shortly. I will update this post as soon as I get it.
Update: Of the 8,000 matches, Facebook spokesman Barry Schmidt responds:Obviously, we are going to investigate. We hope to define them and remove them as soon as possible.
He also cautions that these should be viewed as potential matches:Facebook does not allow the same investigations by an outsider as by insiders. Saying there is a positive match of 8,000 sex offenders is difficult to for an outsider to do. You would need would need more than a name and a photo the size of your thumb. The correct way would be to characterize them as potential matches.
And he says this of Sentinal:For a company that has a mission to keep kids safe, we find it irresponsible that they wouldn’t share this with us. Or, if not with us, how about with law enforcement? This could have been an announcement that Sentinel and Facebook removed 8,000 potential sex offenders. We still don’t have the information on who they are. If you are willing to share that with us, we will investigate immediately.
(I am forwarding the spreadsheet with the list of matched names to Facebook).
Update 2: Here is an official statement from Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer (who may be considering a run for California Attorney General), which explains how Facebook currently screens for sex offenders and works with attorneys general to remove them:Protecting our users, especially the many children who use our site has always been a top priority for Facebook. We have devoted significant resources to developing innovative and complex systems to proactively monitor the site and its users, including those not on a sex offender registry, for suspicious activity (such as contacting minors or users of predominantly one gender).
We also have established a large team of professional investigators to evaluate any reports of potential abuse, including those surfaced by our systems or from our users. We have been working proactively with states’ attorneys general to run their lists of registered sex offenders against our user base. Our team uses various internal tools to automatically find matches. Any potential matches are evaluated more fully by our internal team of investigation professionals.
If we find that someone on a sex offender registry is a likely match to a user on Facebook, we notify law enforcement and disable the account. In some cases, law enforcement has asked us to leave the accounts active so that they may investigate the user further.
We have worked proactively to establish a publicly available national database available to everyone of registered sex offenders that enables real-time checks and includes important unique information like email addresses and IM handles. The passage of the KIDS Act, a measure we actively supported, was a major step forward and we’ve already contacted the new administration to offer our help in designing the real-time access features that it supports.
We are glad to be able to report that the success of these techniques means that we have not yet had to handle a case of a registered sex offender meeting a minor through Facebook. We are working hard to make sure it never happens and we are investigating Sentinel’s claim.
Kelly raises a valid point: Why isn’t there already a publicly available national database of registered sex offenders that can be used for such screening purposes? ..News Source.. by Erick Schonfeld
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
January 16, 2008
Registered sex offenders on MySpace - Who did nothing wrong with minors
MySpace purged over 36,000 registered sex offenders who had accounts on MySpace in 2007:
Those identified are among a national total of about 7,000 registered sex offenders whose names were deleted and handed over by Fox Interactive Media, the owner of MySpace, to law enforcement authorities in all 50 states in late May.
Prodded by a gaggle of state attorneys general, MySpace canceled the accounts of 29,000 people who are registered sex offenders,
This was done because dozens of state Attorney Generals were falsely accusing those RSOs of CONTACTING minors on MySpace. While it is true that some were on parole or probation, and some of them were not supposed to be on the Internet, and those will suffer the consequence of TECHNICAL violation of parole or probation and MAY return to jails or prisons, there is no proof they were contacting minors.
Todate (1-15-2008) MySpace still has not changed its Terms of Service (TOS) to advise persons who sign up for an account, that if they are a registered sex offender they may not sign up for an account. Yes, MySpace verbally tells folks that, but fails to change the TOS. Obviously they are using a form of civil entrapment.
Subsequent to that fiasco the truth is slowly being revealed:
New Hampshire: "Last July, MySpace identified and expelled 29,000 sex offenders from its site, including 153 offenders from New Hampshire. The state Department of Corrections reviewed all of the New Hampshire cases but found none of the registered offenders had violated probation or parole conditions, Ayotte said (NH Attorney General)." source: Union Leader.com 1-15-2008
Illinois: Here they have done a wonderful analysis of the activities of the 1,558 Illinois RSOs who had MySpace accounts, but notice, not one of them contacted a minor, yes some violated parole but that is a technical violation not a crime. One was later caught with child porn, but again, nothing to do with his MySpace account:
1,558 RSOs had MySpace accounts and logged on;
202,986 Number times those RSOs logged into their profile between February and April 2007
(Source Chicago Sun-Time 1-15-2008)
Opposing Thoughts
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JupiterResearch analyst Barry Parr took issue with the approach taken by the attorneys general, suggesting they were looking to grab headlines and were pushing for laws that would infringe on everybody's privacy and right to anonymity.
"I think it's stupid to look at anything like this," he told TechNewsWorld. "The Internet's a communication medium. If you want to control the communications of offenders, you don't do it by controlling the communication media. You don't have telephone companies registering sex offenders or the post office."
Law enforcement, Parr said, should keep track of sex offenders' actions. "But you don't make the rest of us pay consequences," he added. "There are good and valid reasons for anonymity on the Web. People should be allowed to speak anonymously. If you have verification of identity and tracking of what everyone does ... society is going to be diminished. I think this is an upside-down approach to tracking sex offenders." ..more..
