MySpace To Be Made Safer For Users

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "'When News Corp. bought the social-networking Web site MySpace.com last July, the media company got two surprises, one good and one bad,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The good news: Traffic nearly doubled in the last half of last year. The bad news: MySpace is being criticized for exposing children to risqué content and sexual predators. In response, 'News Corp. plans to appoint a "safety czar" to oversee the site, launch an education campaign that may include letters to schools and public-service announcements to encourage children not to reveal their contact information."

Comments

What do you mean exposing children to predators?

[PrimeWaveZ]

Have you seen Myspace? It's the 13 year old whorish girls who are talking about their sex lives and their 13 year old boyfriends who want to be pimps who are the dangerous ones on Myspace. That situation makes it a magnet for sex predators, but Myspace seems to be the catalyst for self-destruction as well as a forum for sex predators to find easy (and willing) targets

The dangers are real

[TechnoGuyRob]

While it may seem silly, the dangers explained in the article are reality. Myspace has 56 million users. With all of the personal information I have seen on profiles, it is only expectable that it is misused someday.

A few months ago, a friend of a student at my school experienced a horrible ordeal. Her best friend was murdered and raped by an assaulter who had obtained her personal information from her "Facebook" (another popular--mainly among college students--online community service).

Either way, I find it absurd how much people disclose on their profiles. I won't post any links, but people have their addresses, home phone numbers, and--the perfect appetizer for an attacker--half-dressed pictures. I don't know about you, but that smells like trouble to me.