MySpace announced that it will provide state attorneys general with information about sex offenders who had profiles on their site. My question is, how can MySpace determine which of its members are sex offenders? For one, you don’t have to use your real name or real location to sign up for MySpace. But let’s say that someone did use their real name, for example “John Smith.” How does MySpace know that this John Smith is the same one who is in a database of registered sex offenders? And what if you happened to share the same name as a registered sex offender - what would stop them from thinking you are the person and canceling your account and reporting your name to the authorities?
Also, regarding the last paragraph, how could they possibly create a reliable age verification system? They can ask you to certify that you are of a certain age, but how can they verify it, short of having you send them a copy of your drivers license or birth certificate?
What? You didn’t get an answer in three hours in the middle of the afternoon, EDT? GQ people work for a living. Well, most of 'em. And many are prohibited by the meanies at work from using a computer. Give it a chance.
Many sites (okay, at least SOME sites) require a credit card to sign up - not because there’s a charge, but because you have to be 18 in the US to have a credit card. Could a kid snag a card from Mom’s purse and use it to sign up? Yep, but it’s better than nothing.
As of now, MySpace does not require a credit card to sign up, and I cannot imagine that it would do so… and if it did, it would be terribly easy to borrow mom’s card or to use a stolen one.
My guess is that, if a law enforcement official recognizes a sex offender, or notifies MySpace about a potential sex offender, MySpace has agreed to cooperate without a fight.
In my jurisdiction, sex offenders are often required to have either limited, monitored computer access or no access at all to the internet, while on Probation or Parole. A provider like MySpace may just be cooperating in enforcement.
Also, when we have a crime concerning or involving people between 12 and 25, the police are often looking on MySpace and other similar sites. I’m always shocked at what people confess to, and even provide evidence of, on the web.
Don’t the registries, and perhaps MySpace’s registration, ask for home address? That would give a pretty good indication that you are talking about the same person. There may be some risk of a false positive, which is unfortunate. But did MySpace’s have a user agreement that promised any kind of privacy? If not, then the risk to them of false positives is a matter of customer dissatisfaction, probably outweighed by customer satisfaction and good PR from removing the real sex offenders.
As to the age verification, I assume soon we will just be scanning the barcodes on the backs of our necks for most internet transactions…
No, I don’t think that MySpace asks for a home address. You can choose to enter your location (your zip code), but you can just enter any location you want.
At the myspace.com signup page I see that they ask for the following:
Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Country, State/Province, Postal Code, Date Of Birth, Gender
At first glance I would guess that they use those fields to match up with offender lists (first name, last name, date of birth, postal code, gender). Perhaps also photos and postings on the myspace page? Of course they might make mistakes, but where does it say that their methods are 100% accurate? It’s like when the police arrest people - they don’t always get the right person.
What confuses me is this: a sex offender who knows they are not allowed to have MySpace page under terms of their probation, or who is planning on using MySpace to prey on children, is obviously not going to enter their real name or their real birthday, or even their real location. You can enter anything you want into those fields. In fact, I bet that many normal people who are not criminals are not comfortable putting all that personal info in there, so they enter false information.
You could easily just enter “J. Doe” born on 1/1/1980, living in zip code 90210, and then just post random photos from the Internet on your profile and pass them off as you.
It just seems to me that these efforts are futile because most of these criminals would not be using accurate personal information to sign up.
That’s why the news article says “[mySpace] would release information on registered sex offenders it has identified” and not “it has identified all registered sex offenders and would release information on them”.
All my space requires is below. And you can fill in anything you want. I have a lot of websites and I always make a myspace page to my website. A myspace page can be a business too.
Email Address:
First Name:
Last Name:
Password:
Confirm Password:
Country:
State/Province:
Postal Code:
Date Of Birth:
Gender: Female Male
Allow others to see when it’s my birthday
Preferred Site & Language:
In my state I can go oline and see pictures of sex offenders. What’s to prevent someone from just taking a pic and making a phony MySpace profile with someone else’s pic to get him in trouble?
On thing I have learned is that people are stupid. I used to verify reference in a human resources department. You wouldn’t believe the number of people that had me call references that were not favorable. But they put them down anyway.
You may have overestimated the intelligence of some of them. Remember, News of the Weird used to report on bank robbers who handed the teller their driver’s license or a personal check or other ID. This has been in their “No Longer Weird” category for ages.
If you mean the efforts are futile in that the internet will never be safe enough for a teenager to just go out there and trust everyone they meet, of course I agree. But I don’t think they’re too futile to be a sound business practice for MySpace.