After several embarrassing media reports of sex offenders prowling around MySpace, the popular online hangout said yesterday that it will deploy new technology to boot predators from its pages.
The move was widely applauded, but some MySpace watchers question whether it will be effective because sex offenders can conceal their identities online.
MySpace.com, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., is at the vortex of the highly charged issue of pedophiles prowling the Web.
A North Carolina police officer was arrested this fall, accused in the rape of a 14-year-old lured to a purported police-ride-along program through MySpace.
Meanwhile, there have been several reports of convicted sex offenders submitting MySpace profiles - without mentioning their crimes.
No one would minimize the dangers of Web-cruising pedophiles. But whether they are as rampant a problem as portrayed by the media apparently is in the eye of the beholder.
Larry Rosen, a California psychology professor who has studied MySpace, has found that kids think reports of MySpace's possible dangers are overblown in contrast with parents who think they are underestimated.
MySpace announced yesterday a partnership with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to build a database containing names and physical descriptions of convicted sex offenders.
The automated system, due to launch in about 30 days, will comb MySpace for sex offenders, booting all traces of them from the site, said Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer. "They're deleted."
Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, praised MySpace's effort. "I think it's a terrific idea."
The Web is an especially attractive venue for pedophiles because it offers a relatively low-risk, anonymous way to reach kids, Allen said.
A study financed by the center and done by University of New Hampshire researchers found that, in 2005, 13 percent of children ages 10 to 17 said they had received an unwanted online sexual solicitation.
A silver lining from that report: That 13 percent was considerably lower than the 19 percent found in 2000, the last time the center conducted such a study.
Rosen, who teaches at California State University, Dominguez Hills, has found that sexual solicitations on MySpace are less common than on the Web generally - at least as found by the children's center study.
