Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Guilt by Association

After initial resistance, MySpace has been releasing information on registered sex offenders it has identified and removed from the social-networking Web site to the Attorney Generals of eight states. According to The Washington Post, MySpace has removed about 7,000 profiles, of a total of about 180 million (You can see the effectiveness of this campaign here, in a quick survey that found that five of nine discovered members were still online and actively networking).

Unfortunately, one of those 7,000 profiles belonged to Jessica Davis, a 29-year-old University of Colorado senior. The Wired Blog Network has been following the story of a woman wrongly accused of being a sex offender and having her MySpace account removed from the site. Although MySpace has yet to acknowledge the error, Sentinel, the company that built the sex-offender database, has.

Needless to say this new policy has, to say the least, many limitations and gaps. Will it protect children? As my Magic 8-ball would say "outlook not good."

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