Robert Lemos of SecurityFocus posted an article today entitled “MySpace teams to create sex-offender database.” Here is a brief excerpt of the article:
Under the joint initiative, Sentinel, the products-focused subsidiary of Sentinel Tech Holding, will build and maintain a monolithic database of the United States’ 550,000 registered sex offenders, while MySpace will develop technology for using the information in the database and the profiles of its 130 million users to detect potential predators. In addition, MySpace is advocating a law that would require those found guilty of sex crimes to register all their e-mail addresses with the national database.
So, it seems that those in charge of maintaining MySpace actually believe that predators will enter valid information when registering to use their site. I fear that they are setting themselves up for failure. The Internet, by nature, enables individuals to completely fabricate their identities. Do they really think that these predators will register their email addresses? They may register an email address so that they seemingly comply with the requirement, but I have a hard time believing that this is enforceable in any way.
Most net-savvy users have several email addresses and create throw-away email addresses for various purposes all the time. In fact, services such as 10 Minute Mail along with many others , exist to provide on-the-fly disposablity and anonymity.
While unpopular, I believe that the best way to protect children on the Internet is to be good parents; teach our kids how to make good decisions (hopefully) and how to detect predators. Finally, we must step-in as parents and exercise our ultimate right: monitor and restrict what they do. Of course, some challenge that right; but that’s another story…
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