MySpace to identify and remove convicted sex offenders from the site

New software tracks federal and state databases for reference

6 December 2006 10:34 GMT / By Amber Maitland

MySpace is taking unprecidented steps to remove and block convicted sex offenders' profiles from the social networking site.

Popular amongst teens and young adults, and numbering over 100 million registered users, MySpace has also been attractive to adults looking for sex with underage members.

The company has signed an agreement with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp to develop Sentinel Safe, and application which will cross reference US state and federal databases of sex offenders with MySpace profiles.

The Sentinel Safe database will contain information on convicted sex offenders that includes names, ages, physical descriptions complete with height, weight, eye and hair colour, and tattoos or other identifying features.

Once the system is set up in the next month or so, MySpace plans to employ staff 24 hours a day to monitor profiles that the Sentinel Safe application flags for examination.

“Sentinel Safe will allow us to aggregate all publicly available sex offender databases into a real-time searchable form, making it easy to cross-reference and remove known registered sex offenders from the MySpace community”, said MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam.

Full tags

Software, Online, Social networking, MySpace