INTERNET
MySpace deletes 29,000 sex offenders
25-07-2007
by Ciara O'Brien
Social networking site MySpace has cleaned up its membership database, deleting the profiles of more than 29,000 convicted sex offenders.
The news, which was first broken by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, comes after the site deleted 7,000 similar profiles in May. MySpace currently has more than 70 million active unique users
The News Corp-owned website pledged to ban sex offenders from using its site after coming under increasing pressure to put in place measures to protect underage users. The minimum age for having a MySpace profile is 14, and the site has implemented new procedures to ensure that underage members cannot be randomly contacted by older users.
Social networking sites have been criticised for providing a conduit for sex offenders to groom their victims. MySpace has already been named in lawsuits taken by the families of young members who met their attackers through the networking site.
In response, MySpace signed a deal last year with Sentinel Tech Holdings to help it develop a database of convicted sex offenders in the US which would be used to track offenders online. It is also working on software that will allow parents to monitor what their child does on MySpace. In June, a second sex offender was convicted of violating his parole after he was found to have a MySpace profile.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 