Social Networking Site Alert

29,000 Registered Sex Offenders Found on MySpace

According to a recent Associated Press article, MySpace.com has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the popular social networking Web site. This number is more than four times the number cited by the company two months ago, North Carolina officials said Tuesday.

A North Carolina attorney, Roy Cooper, is one of several attorneys general who recently demanded the News Corp.-owned Web site provide data on how many registered sex offenders were using the site, along with information about where they live. MySpace, citing federal privacy laws, initially withheld the information. After the states filed formal legal requests, MySpace began sharing the information in May.

At the time, MySpace said it had already used a database it helped create to remove about 7,000 profiles of sex offenders, out of a total of about 180 million profiles on the site.

Visit Their Space . . . Or Yours? Internet Issues Come to Camp for expert advice on:

• Creating Internet social networking policies
• Developing protocols for staff
• Educating parents
• Other recommended online resources

Visit Their Space or Yours? Social Networking Sites Bring Risks and Rewards to the Camp Community to learn how camps can respond to the risks of online social networking sites from creating Internet policies and protocols to partnering with parents.