MySpace: A Place for Perverts

On December 5, 2006 the MySpace Chief Security Officer, Hemanshu Nigam announced that they would be searching through their list of over one hundred million users to determine if any of the myspace profiles match those of the people who are listed as registered sex offenders in databases maintained by various states across the nation. As hopeful as this sounds, it does not necessarily mean that sexual predators will indeed be brought to justice because according the terms set forth by myspace anyone can use fictitious information to register their account which means that if a sex offender chooses not to use their real name, location, age or description, he will fall beneath the radar and could elude officials. There are currently forty-six states that keep a database of registered sex offenders and that counts for 550,000 criminals free to roam the internet.

There are no laws against a sexual predator accessing the internet except in the few cases where the judge has specified the felon may not do so. Myspace has not only benefited from this loophole, it has become the playground for perverts with its policy for anonymity and access to literally thousands of children.

Rapists and molesters have been handed the keys to the city in this instance since anyone can sign up for a free account posing as someone else. The only criteria for signing up is that you have an email address to which the verification email can be sent and as we all know, anyone can obtain an email address without divulging their true identity. Once this verification email has been read, the myspace user has the ability to read comments, view pictures and videos of anyone in the system. Some might argue that by saying if you are under the age of 14 you can set your profile to private but as many parents have found out the hard way, that doesn't stop anyone from really seeing your page. A simple goggle will turn up tons of results for how to actually view private profiles on myspace.