Sex Offenders-Kids please read and please be wise!

REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS-WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING



MYSPACE.COM CONFIRMS 29,000 SEX OFFENDERS WITH PROFILES ON THE SITE.


MySpace confirmed 29,000 sex offenders.
Social networking site cannot remove profiles of convicted sex offenders in an effort to create a better safeguard for minors unless they have documented transmission of an effort or intent to violate their parole guidelines with a minor.
Sept. 24 2007: 6:53 PM EDT


NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Popular Internet social network MySpace said Tuesday it detected and has confirmed 29,000 convicted sex offenders on its service, more than four times the figure it had initially reported before the California case involving over 50 minors that prompted public outrage. "If they can confirm 29,000 then that tells me the figure must be at least 50% higher even", says Jay Sekulow from the American Center for Law and Justice.

The company, owned by media conglomerate News Corp (Charts, Fortune 500), said in May it had deleted about 7,000 user profiles that belonged to convicted offenders who had engaged in explicit messages and met with minors. MySpace attracts about 60 million unique visitors monthly in the United States.


The new information was first revealed by California state authorities after MySpace turned over information on convicted sex offenders it had removed from the service to try to reverse the public sentiment after the California case.

The red hot, and wealthy social network has virtually no safeguards in place despite the loss of 17 civil suits. "If you lose $30 million in civil judgements, but raked in over $212 million you tell me why it doesn't sting them." Sekulow argued.
"The exploding epidemic of sex offender profiles on MySpace - 29,000 and counting - screams for action," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement.

Blumenthal, who led a coalition of state authorities to lobby MySpace for more stringent safeguards for minors, and other state AGs have demanded the service begin verifying a user's age and require parental permission for minors.

The minimum age to register on MySpace is 14.

"We're pleased that we've successfully identified registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead," MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said in a statement. Many feel Nigam is too proud of his compoany's efforts.

The service has come under attack over the past year after some of its young members fell prey to adult predators posing as minors. The families of several teenage girls sexually assaulted by MySpace members sued the service in January for failing to safeguard its young members in the latest civil battle.

Late last year, it struck a partnership with background verification company Sentinel Tech Holdings Corp. to co-develop the first U.S. national database of convicted sex offenders to make it easier to track offenders on the Internet.

Convicted sex offenders are required by law to register their contact information with local authorities. But the information has only been available on regional databases, making nationwide searches difficult.

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