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MySpace Plans Task Force To Block Child Predators

AP photo by MARK LENNIHAN

Hemanshu Nigam, left, Chief Security Officer for MySpace, and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, participate in a news conference in New York on Monday, Jan. 14, 2008. MySpace, the huge online social networking Web site, has agreed with more than 45 states to add extensive measures to combat sexual predators.

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By JOSH POLTILOVE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 14, 2008

Updated: 01/14/2008 04:40 pm

MySpace.com, a popular social networking Web site, has agreed to make design and policy changes to protect children from harmful images and unwanted contact from adults.

Attorneys general in several states have sought greater controls for networking Web sites so children can be protected from predators.

Investigators increasingly have examined MySpace, Facebook.com and similar sites that allow people to invite contacts and post information and images on the Web. A multistate investigation of the sites — announced last year — was aimed at putting together measures to protect minors and remove pornographic material, but lawsuits were possible, officials said.

"Unfortunately, cybercrime is very prevalent on the Internet, and I commend MySpace and its parent company, News Corp., for working diligently to protect our children," Attorney General Bill McCollum said in a statement. "We must take every opportunity to make the Internet a safer place for children, and I encourage other social networking sites to adopt many of the design changes announced by MySpace today."

National statistics show that 77 million children are on the Internet every day and that one of seven children between the ages of 10 and 17 will be sexually solicited online, according to Florida's attorney general's office.

Stacy Arruda, a supervisory special agent at Tampa's FBI office who investigates computer crime, said the problems with sexual predators, children and social networking sites extend far beyond MySpace.

There are hundreds of networking sites, and children don't realize that by posting their personal identification and pictures on them, anyone in the world can view it, she said.

"What MySpace is doing is a start. It's better than nothing," she said this afternoon. "I guess we'll wait and see what effect it has. But if one Web site is too restrictive, the kids will move to another Web site."

MySpace plans to create an Internet Safety Technical Task Force, which will work on age and identity verification, according to Florida's attorney general's office.

Task force members will come from child protection groups, social networking sites, technology companies and age and identity verification experts. They will report to attorneys general every three months, issuing findings and recommendations by year's end.

MySpace plans to create a registry of e-mail addresses for parents who want to restrict their children's access to the site.

MySpace also agreed to create a closed "high school" section for users who are younger than 18 and make 16- and 17-year-olds' Web pages private by default, according to the attorney general's office.

"Today's announcement is a landmark step forward in providing new protections for teenage members of social networking sites such as MySpace," Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, said in a statement. "Social networking sites have been a great innovation for all Americans, regardless of their age. … Our goal is to nurture and expand their community, while providing a safer online experience. We have embraced a constant focus toward online safety as one of the best ways to make sure our users keep coming back to MySpace."

A Fort Lauderdale man was charged this past month with lewd molestation, lewd battery and enticing a child via the Internet after, deputies said, he had sex several times with a 14-year-old Polk County girl he met on MySpace. Richard Roland Gagnon Jr. took the girl to local motels four times and committed lewd acts during several of those encounters, the sheriff's office said.

"We must all work together to keep our children safe from pedophiles and predators who are online every day using their charm and charisma in order to sexually abuse our children," Sheriff Grady Judd said at the time.

In April, an FBI special agent with the Innocent Images Task Force in Tampa said it took only minutes for him to find dozens of MySpace pages of River Ridge Middle and High School students.

Some of the students had posted their schedules or cell phone numbers.

"If I'm a predator, now I've got their phone number," special agent Scott Earl said at the time. "This is like one-stop shopping. I can even follow them home from school."

Innocent Images Task force members go online, pose as children and try to catch predators. The task forces in Tampa, Orlando and Fort Myers have helped make about 50 arrests in the past year, Arruda said.

"It's a drop in the bucket," Arruda said of those arrests. "This problem is very big. I don't even know how to quantify it. It's large, and it's growing."

Information about keeping children and teens safe on the Internet can be found at www.netsmartz.org and www.i-safe.org.

Information from The Associated Press and Tribune archives was used in this report. Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at jpoltilove@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7691.

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