You may have recently seen the article on the Wired news editor that wrote a program to track registered sex-offenders on MySpace. This line stood out for me.
The Wired News project also illustrates something MySpace could do to make its community safer, she says: hunting down and banning sex offenders from its site.
I don’t think this is a good idea. I think we need to do what we can to make it easy for sex predators hang themselves. If they do not sign up with MySpace, then they may engage in activities which are less conducive to monitoring. I’d rather have a pederast on MySpace than hanging out in parks. Of course, I’m sure MySpace’s board of directors wouldn’t want their site to be a net of this kind.
But the article states:
“Proactively scouring MySpace pages is futile: The smarter sexual predators stick to private messages, and diligently prune their public comment boards of any posts from young friends that hint at what’s happening behind the scenes.”
So sex offenders will not necessarily implicate themselves by default or “hang themselves,” as you suggest (to the contrary, actually, it seems fairly easy to cover one’s tracks).
The author notes:
“One North Carolina user went to prison in 1999 for rape and ‘indecent liberties with a minor.’ When he got out this year, he was on MySpace within two months — though so far his only friend is MySpace’s Tom.”
This seems like a typical example of a man who may indeed be engaging in inappropriate activity “behind the scenes,” without having a traceable network of friends that an investigator could check on. It’s possible that he’s behaving illicitly, but impossible to validate. This lurking is like “hanging out in a park” in cyberspace.
Interesting that the author would write:
“My search left me less convinced that targeting past offenders would be an effective way for MySpace to find current or future predators. By its nature, a search like mine is only going to produce people who use their real names and addresses, and who are perhaps the least likely of the offenders to be up to no good.”
I’d contend that even eliminating the (few) registered sex offenders who use their real names and addresses on MySpace is for the good of the community. There’s really no reason not to make this MySpace policy. Besides, if you are a registered sex offender – even using your real identity – on a teen networking site, I do not extend the benefit of the doubt.
Another surprise:
“The company’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, responded that MySpace would like to ban sex offenders from the site, but is waiting for new laws that would make it easier to do so. He said the company is lobbying Congress for legislation that would require sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with a central database. ‘By having such a database, MySpace and other sites would be able to access it in order to block these individuals from ever registering on the site,’ Nigam said, in a written statement.”
Everyone knows that you can have as many email addresses as you want. How is it helpful to have one in a database? Surely if sex predators are smart enough to “prune” their friends list, they are smart enough to use more than one email. What a ridiculous excuse for inaction.
Although blocking registered sex offenders from MySpace is not the only (nor the most effective, it seems) method of dealing with the problem of sex predators on networking sites, it couldn’t hurt to adopt it as policy.
But the article states:
“Proactively scouring MySpace pages is futile: The smarter sexual predators stick to private messages, and diligently prune their public comment boards of any posts from young friends that hint at what’s happening behind the scenes.”
So sex offenders will not necessarily implicate themselves by default or “hang themselves,” as you suggest (to the contrary, actually, it seems fairly easy to cover one’s tracks).
The author notes:
“One North Carolina user went to prison in 1999 for rape and ‘indecent liberties with a minor.’ When he got out this year, he was on MySpace within two months — though so far his only friend is MySpace’s Tom.”
This seems like a typical example of a man who may indeed be engaging in inappropriate activity “behind the scenes,” without having a traceable network of friends that an investigator could check on. It’s possible that he’s behaving illicitly, but impossible to validate. This lurking is like “hanging out in a park” in cyberspace.
Interesting that the author would write:
“My search left me less convinced that targeting past offenders would be an effective way for MySpace to find current or future predators. By its nature, a search like mine is only going to produce people who use their real names and addresses, and who are perhaps the least likely of the offenders to be up to no good.”
I’d contend that even eliminating the (few) registered sex offenders that use their real names and addresses is good for the community. There’s really no reason not to make this MySpace policy. Besides, if you are a registered sex offender – even using your real identity – on a teen networking site, I do not extend the benefit of the doubt.
Another surprise:
“The company’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, responded that MySpace would like to ban sex offenders from the site, but is waiting for new laws that would make it easier to do so. He said the company is lobbying Congress for legislation that would require sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with a central database. “By having such a database, MySpace and other sites would be able to access it in order to block these individuals from ever registering on the site,” Nigam said, in a written statement.”
Everyone knows that you can have as many email addresses as you want. How is it helpful to have one in a database? Surely if sex predators are smart enough to “prune” their friends list, they are smart enough to use more than one email. What a ridiculous excuse for inaction.
Although blocking registered sex offenders from MySpace is not the only (nor the most effective, it seems) method of dealing with the problem of sex predators on networking sites, it couldn’t hurt to adopt it as policy.
But the article states:
“Proactively scouring MySpace pages is futile: The smarter sexual predators stick to private messages, and diligently prune their public comment boards of any posts from young friends that hint at what’s happening behind the scenes.”
So sex offenders will not necessarily implicate themselves by default or “hang themselves,” as you suggest (to the contrary, actually, it seems fairly easy to cover one’s tracks).
The author notes:
“One North Carolina user went to prison in 1999 for rape and ‘indecent liberties with a minor.’ When he got out this year, he was on MySpace within two months — though so far his only friend is MySpace’s Tom.”
This seems like a typical example of a man who may indeed be engaging in inappropriate activity “behind the scenes,” without having a traceable network of friends that an investigator could check on. It’s possible that he’s behaving illicitly, but impossible to validate. This lurking is like “hanging out in a park” in cyberspace.
Interesting that the author would write:
“My search left me less convinced that targeting past offenders would be an effective way for MySpace to find current or future predators. By its nature, a search like mine is only going to produce people who use their real names and addresses, and who are perhaps the least likely of the offenders to be up to no good.”
I’d contend that even eliminating the (few) registered sex offenders who use their real names and addresses is good for the community. There’s really no reason not to make this MySpace policy. Besides, if you are a registered sex offender – even using your real identity – on a teen networking site, I do not extend the benefit of the doubt.
Another surprise:
“The company’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, responded that MySpace would like to ban sex offenders from the site, but is waiting for new laws that would make it easier to do so. He said the company is lobbying Congress for legislation that would require sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with a central database. “By having such a database, MySpace and other sites would be able to access it in order to block these individuals from ever registering on the site,” Nigam said, in a written statement.”
Everyone knows that you can have as many email addresses as you want. How is it helpful to have one in a database? Surely if sex predators are smart enough to “prune” their friends list, they are smart enough to use more than one email. What a ridiculous excuse for inaction.
Although blocking registered sex offenders from MySpace is not the only (nor the most effective, it seems) method of dealing with the problem of sex predators on networking sites, it couldn’t hurt to adopt it as policy.
But the article states:
“Proactively scouring MySpace pages is futile: The smarter sexual predators stick to private messages, and diligently prune their public comment boards of any posts from young friends that hint at what’s happening behind the scenes.”
So sex offenders will not necessarily implicate themselves by default or “hang themselves,” as you suggest (to the contrary, actually, it seems fairly easy to cover one’s tracks).
The author notes:
“One North Carolina user went to prison in 1999 for rape and ‘indecent liberties with a minor.’ When he got out this year, he was on MySpace within two months — though so far his only friend is MySpace’s Tom.”
This seems like a typical example of a man who may indeed be engaging in inappropriate activity “behind the scenes,” without having a traceable network of friends that an investigator could check on. It’s possible that he’s behaving illicitly, but impossible to validate. This lurking is like “hanging out in a park” in cyberspace.
Interesting that the author would write:
“My search left me less convinced that targeting past offenders would be an effective way for MySpace to find current or future predators. By its nature, a search like mine is only going to produce people who use their real names and addresses, and who are perhaps the least likely of the offenders to be up to no good.”
I’d contend that even eliminating the (few) registered sex offenders who use their real names and addresses is good for the community. There’s really no reason not to make this MySpace policy. Besides, if you are a registered sex offender – even using your real identity – on a teen networking site, I do not extend the benefit of the doubt.
Another surprise:
“The company’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, responded that MySpace would like to ban sex offenders from the site, but is waiting for new laws that would make it easier to do so. He said the company is lobbying Congress for legislation that would require sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with a central database. “By having such a database, MySpace and other sites would be able to access it in order to block these individuals from ever registering on the site,” Nigam said, in a written statement.”
Everyone knows that you can have as many email addresses as you want. How is it helpful to have one in a database? Surely if sex predators are smart enough to “prune” their friends list, they are smart enough to use more than one email. What a ridiculous excuse for inaction.
Although blocking registered sex offenders from MySpace is not the only (nor the most effective, it seems) method of dealing with the problem of sex predators on networking sites, it couldn’t hurt to adopt it as policy.
DELETE
But the article states:
“Proactively scouring MySpace pages is futile: The smarter sexual predators stick to private messages, and diligently prune their public comment boards of any posts from young friends that hint at what’s happening behind the scenes.”
So sex offenders will not necessarily implicate themselves by default or “hang themselves,” as you suggest (to the contrary, actually, it seems fairly easy to cover one’s tracks).
The author notes:
“One North Carolina user went to prison in 1999 for rape and ‘indecent liberties with a minor.’ When he got out this year, he was on MySpace within two months — though so far his only friend is MySpace’s Tom.”
This seems like a typical example of a man who may indeed be engaging in inappropriate activity “behind the scenes,” without having a traceable network of friends that an investigator could check on. It’s possible that he’s behaving illicitly, but impossible to validate. This lurking is like “hanging out in a park” in cyberspace.
Interesting that the author would write:
“My search left me less convinced that targeting past offenders would be an effective way for MySpace to find current or future predators. By its nature, a search like mine is only going to produce people who use their real names and addresses, and who are perhaps the least likely of the offenders to be up to no good.”
I’d contend that even eliminating the (few) registered sex offenders who use their real names and addresses is good for the community. There’s really no reason not to make this MySpace policy. Besides, if you are a registered sex offender – even using your real identity – on a teen networking site, I do not extend the benefit of the doubt.
Another surprise:
“The company’s chief security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, responded that MySpace would like to ban sex offenders from the site, but is waiting for new laws that would make it easier to do so. He said the company is lobbying Congress for legislation that would require sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with a central database. “By having such a database, MySpace and other sites would be able to access it in order to block these individuals from ever registering on the site,” Nigam said, in a written statement.”
Everyone knows that you can have as many email addresses as you want. How is it helpful to have one in a database? Surely if sex predators are smart enough to “prune” their friends list, they are smart enough to use more than one email. What a ridiculous excuse for inaction.
Although blocking registered sex offenders from MySpace is not the only (nor the most effective, it seems) method of dealing with the problem of sex predators on networking sites, it couldn’t hurt to adopt it as policy.
Or you could just build a website called “hot young ass” and catch em that way.
Use private messages. Got it.