Tech Shout!

Following a spate of online sexual-related threats to children as young as 16 and 17 years who have MySpace profiles, efforts are being made to increase the safety of teens on the Internet. Attorney General Terry Goddard has just announced that from now on MySpace will adopt multiple safety measures to protect minors from sexual predators.

Goddard who joined 48 other US attorneys general to make this important announcement said, “This is a work in progress. By no means is this story finished, but it is an important step forward.”

Officials at MySpace stated that minors will soon be able to automatically default their profiles to private. It was further decided that the minimum age to sign up for MySpace will be 14 years of age.

As of now, MySpace anyway reviews the pictures and videos that users upload on to the social networking web site. However, according to Terry Goddard, there is a lot more that can be done, especially in the area of age verification.

In fact, he even went on further to say that since MySpace has access to some of the best technology people in the world, they would be able to do something. For instance, he spoke about a technology that has the ability to match a convicted sexual predator’s mug shot to a photo that he or she may post as his or her profile photo.

Catching online sexual predators can be done by keeping convicted sexual offenders off the Internet and also by keeping those with the potential to commit sexual offense off the Internet.

According to Terry Goddard, the second option seems to be a much stronger line of defense in this matter.

As per the release, other design and functionality changes to MySpace will include:

Users above the age of 18 years of age will not be able to browse for users below 18 years

No user will be able to browse for users under 16 years of age

Users older than 18 years cannot add those under the age of 16 unless they know his/her last name or email address

Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace’s chief security officer confirmed that a contractor has been hired to screen each and every photo and video placed on the social networking site will be screened for inappropriate content as part of this new agreement.

Ernie Allen, President and Chief Executive of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has agreed that his organization will serve on the new Internet Safety Technical Task Force.

“Today millions of teens use social networking sites. MySpace has taken significant steps to be more secure and private and to identify those who attempt to do harm on their site. The collaborative effort between MySpace and the Attorneys General is a major step that will make using social networking sites much safer for teens,” said Allen.