Facebook, Myspace Give Thousands More Pervs the Cyber Boot

Photo credit / Getty Images

BY Kenneth Lovett
DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF

ALBANY - In a major crackdown on Internet predators, more than 3,500 convicted New York sex fiends have been booted from two online social networking sites, sources told the Daily News.

The pervs were kicked off Facebook and MySpace in the first sweep of registered sex offenders under the Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP), a 2008 law Attorney General Andrew Cuomo aggressively pushed.

"This should really be a wakeup call for everybody, whether it's parents watching what their kids do online, and all the law enforcement groups and authorities, and the sites themselves," one source familiar of the mass Facebook and MySpace purges said.

Laura Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan's Law and the Crime Victims Center, said the fact thousands of offenders were dumped proves the law is working.

"Before e-STOP sexual predators freely lurked in social networking sites trolling for innocent victims," she said.

"With e-STOP, Attorney General Cuomo has sent a clear message that there is a new sheriff in the cyberworld protecting our most vulnerable."

Among the major findings of the first sweep:

- Those kicked off Facebook and MySpace in recent weeks include a man convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy, another who raped a 2-year-old girl, and a third convicted of sexual misconduct against a 10-year-old girl, sources said.

- Of the 3,533 offenders booted from the sites, 659 were from New York City and 328 from Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties.

- MySpace disabled a total of 1,975 accounts linked to 1,796 New York sex offenders over the past few weeks, the sources said.

- Facebook disabled 3,410 accounts linked to 2,782 offenders. There's overlap because some 1,045 registered sex offenders signed up with both sites.

- Of the 8,106 registered sex offenders who reported their online information to the state, 43.5% were either on the Facebook or MySpace networking sites, sources familiar with the situation said.

Under e-STOP, convicted sex offenders forced to register with the state must provide home addresses, e-mail addresses, site usernames, and online profiles as well.

State officials made the information available in the past two months to the social networking sites that want them.

Cuomo wants other networking sites to follow the lead of My-Space and Facebook.

The names of those booted have been sent to the state Division of Parole, which will determine if any of the offenders violated their early release provisions by being on the social networking sites, the sources said.

Out of the nearly 30,000 registered sex offenders in the state, 8,106 have supplied their e-mail addresses and other online information, the state Division of Criminal Justice Services said.

The rest either are back in prison, homeless, don't have computer access, or didn't respond, a DCJS spokesman said.

Sex offenders have 10 days to notify the state after creating new online profiles or face prosecution for a new felony.

Cuomo's office wouldn't comment yesterday, but last year, after the legislation was signed into law, Cuomo noted that "the playground of today is not just on the streetcorner . . . the playground of today is cyberspace."

Photo credit/ Smith for News

Users Beware. The "Man" is on Facebook, MySpace, Etc

By Alicia Cruz

Senior writer

Theblackurbantimes

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, people: Be careful about what you say and post on the internet because it could come back to bite you. The Wall Stree Journal is offering lessons on this very subject this week.

Let's say you owe back child support, taxes or owe a debt to the Department of Treasury. Well, their agents (collectors) are able to use the info you post on your facebook, myspace or any other social network site to track you down and collect their debt. The article stated that "In Nebraska, 'agents are not allowed to 'friend' someone using false information,' for example. But anything posted publicly -- which is the default for anything posted on MySpace -- can be used against you in the quest to collect on your tax bill."
So users beware. The "man" is now socuring social networking sites in order to catch you. A prime example of the lengths they will go to: "One deejay posted on his MySpace page that he'd be working at an upcoming party. Agents decided to crash it to collect their cash. Another man announced he was moving back to his home town and published the name of his new boss. Finding him to collect on an old tax bill was a matter of ease."

And in case you've never Googled your own name, try it. You will be quite surprised at what comes up and how much of your personal info is out there for anyone to view. Sites like Yahoo ask you if you'd like to make your personal information searchable by users. I would highly recommend that you check "No."

Facebook makes it easy to find users by their first names and I won't even go into Google or other search engines.

Just be careful what you choose to make available to the public and be even more careful at what you choose to post from blurbs to photos. Uncle Same, The "man" and a lot of other people are watching.

14-Year-Old New Jersey Girl May Get Sex Offender Status

Teen posts 30 Nude Photos On MySpace Of Herself
TRENTON- (AP) A 14-year-old New Jersey girl has been accused of child pornography after posting nearly 30 explicit nude pictures of herself on MySpace.com — charges that could force her to register as a sex offender if convicted.
The case comes as prosecutors nationwide pursue child pornography cases resulting from kids sending nude photos to one another over cell phones and e-mail. Legal experts, though, could not recall another case of a child porn charge resulting from a teen’s posting to a social networking site.
MySpace would not comment on the New Jersey investigation, but the company has a team that reviews its network for inappropriate images. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tipped off a state task force, which alerted the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office.
The office investigated and discovered the Clifton resident had posted the “very explicit” photos of herself, sheriff’s spokesman Bill Maer said Thursday.
“We consider this case a wake-up call to parents,” Maer said. The girl posted the photos because “she wanted her boyfriend to see them,” he said.
Investigators are looking at individuals who “knowingly” committed a crime, he said, declining to comment further because the case is still being investigated.
The teen, whose name has not been released because of her age, was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography and distribution of child pornography. She was released to her mother’s custody.
If convicted of the distribution charge, she would be forced to register with the state as a sex offender under Megan’s Law, said state Attorney General Anne Milgram. She also could face up to 17 years in jail, though such a stiff sentence is unlikely.
Some observers - including the New Jersey mother behind the creation of Megan’s Law — are criticizing the trend of prosecuting teens who send racy text messages or post illicit photos of themselves.

Maureen Kanka - whose daughter, Megan, became the law’s namesake after she was raped and killed at age 7 in 1994 by a twice-convicted sex offender - blasted authorities for charging the 14-year-old girl.
The teen needs help, not legal trouble, she said.
“This shouldn’t fall under Megan’s Law in any way, shape or form. She should have an intervention and counseling, because the only person she exploited was herself.”
Called “sexting” when it’s done by cell phone, teenagers’ habit of sending sexually suggestive photos of themselves and others to one another is a nationwide problem that has confounded parents, school administrators and law enforcers.
Prosecutors in states including Pennsylvania, Connecticut, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin have tried stop it by charging teens who send and receive the pictures.
In northeastern Pennsylvania, a prosecutor recently threatened to file child porn charges against three teenage girls who authorities say took racy cell-phone pictures that ended up on classmates’ cell phones.
The MySpace case may be a first, though.
“I’m not sure I’ve seen a prosecution like this coming out of a social networking site,” said Seth Kreimer, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Milgram, the attorney general, could not recall another such case in New Jersey. She cautioned parents to get on those sites and monitor what their kids are talking about and posting.
“Unfortunately, youth don’t have the same judgment as adults,” she said, “and often, adults don’t have the same technical savvy as the youth.”

MySpace: 90,000 sex offenders removed from site

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — About 90,000 sex offenders have been identified and removed from the social networking Web site MySpace, company and law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
The number was nearly double what MySpace officials originally estimated last year, said North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, who along with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has led efforts to make social networking Web sites safer for young users.
Cooper said he wasn't surprised by the updated numbers, and demanded that MySpace and rival online networking site Facebook — which claim to have more than 170 million users combined — do more to protect children and teenagers.
"These sites were created for young people to communicate with each other. Predators are going to troll in these areas where they know children are going to be," Cooper said. "That's why these social networking sites have the responsibility to make their sites safe for children."
The attorneys general received agreements last year from MySpace and Facebook to push toward making their sites safer. Both sites implemented dozens of safeguards, including finding better ways to verify user's ages, banning convicted sex offenders from using the sites and limiting the ability of older users to search members under 18.
Blumenthal, who received MySpace's updated numbers Tuesday through a subpoena, said the information "provides compelling proof that social networking sites remain rife with sexual predators." A preliminary number of sex offenders found on Facebook was "substantial," but he said the company has yet to respond to a recent subpoena.
MySpace executives said they were confident in the technology they use to find, remove and block registered sex offenders. The company uses Sentinel SAFE, a database it created in 2006 with the names, physical descriptions and other identifiable characteristics of sex offenders that cross-references against MySpace members.
"Sentinel SAFE is the best industry solution to ensure these offenders are removed from social networks," Hemanshu Nigam, the company's chief security officer, said in a statement Tuesday.
MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has more than 110 million active users worldwide.
A spokesman for Facebook, which claims more than 61 million active users, said Tuesday that protecting its users has always been a priority.
"We have a policy prohibiting registered sex offenders from joining Facebook," said spokesman Barry Schnitt. "We are glad to be able to report that we have not yet had to handle a case of a registered sex offender meeting a minor through Facebook. We are working hard to make sure it never happens."
Still, Cooper said more should be done.
"Technology moves forward quickly, and it's important for these companies to stay ahead of the technology," he said. "And they're not moving fast enough for us."
The push for better restrictions came during a time when social-networking Web sites were seeing exponential growth, with most of it coming in the form of younger users. But along with the younger members came sexual predators who would lie about their age to lure young victims.
Blumenthal and Cooper, who co-chair the State Attorney General Task Force on Social Networking, have led the charge for tougher restrictions to be placed on who joins online social-networking sites.
The Internet Safety Technical Task Force report, commissioned by the attorneys general in 2008, researched ways to help squash the onslaught of sexual predators targeting younger social-networking clients. Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies, a report by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force submitted to attorneys general in December, pointed out there was no surefire way to guarantee online child safety.
"Our law enforcement officers investigating these cases tell us that predators are soliciting children on the Internet and in social networking sites," Cooper said. "We're working to provide more law enforcement to protect our kids, but social networking sites and technology companies must do their part as well."

Study: Sex, Violence Amongst Teen Talk on MySpace

By Elizabeth Landau
(CNN) -A new study finds that 54 percent of teens talk about behaviors such as sex, alcohol use, and violence on the social networking giant MySpace -- presenting potential risks even if all they're doing is talking, researchers said Monday. The study looked at MySpace profiles of 500 people who identified themselves as 18-year-old males and females in the United States. References to risky behaviors included both words and photos, the authors said.
Not all teens who write about risky behaviors in their profiles actually engage in them in real life, said Dr. Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, one of the authors of the study, which appears in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
They may instead talk about sex, substance use, or violence because they are contemplating doing those things, or because they want to brag without actually doing what they say, Moreno said.
Even if teens have not actually engaged in risky behaviors but merely brag about them online, this can still affect their future behavior, said study co-author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Hospital.
Those who lie about the behaviors to show off may receive positive feedback from others -- comments such as "that's great" or "I do the same thing" -- that encourage them to actually try out the behaviors, he said.
Apart from that, teens who claim such behaviors are more likely to be victims of bullying and unwanted invitations for sex, he said. In a second study, Moreno and colleagues identified 190 profiles of 18- to 20-year-olds that contained three or more references to sexual behaviors or substance abuse. The authors then made a profile of their own, called "Dr. Meg," from which they sent a single e-mail to half these profiles, warning them about the risky information and offering information about clinical resources.
They found that, after three months, 42.1 percent of the profile owners who received the e-mail -- and 29.5 percent of those who did not -- either removed references to risky behaviors or made their profiles private. "It's really not that MySpace is bad or good. I think the lesson is that it's a tool, and how you use it determines the kinds of outcome you're going to get," Moreno said.
Experts say the bottom line is that parents should get more involved in the online lives of their children.
"I tell parents that they should absolutely create their own MySpace and Facebook page," Christakis said. The study inspired him to create his own Facebook account, and his 10-year-old already wants to know about his "friends," he said.
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