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A few days ago news broke that MySpace found a whopping 29,000+ sex offenders using the site.

With an estimated 600,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, this means that 5% of all of America’s sex offenders were stupid enough to put in personally identifiable information in their profiles. How much do you want to bet that more than 5% of sex offenders are on MySpace?

I was unable to discover what exactly MySpace used to identify the offenders, but a comment on MyCrimeSpace claims that MySpace uses facial recognition software to identify predators. I was unable to verify this, but this story about a false positive hints that they may be using recognition software, since the woman falsely accused was pictured with a man who was a registered sex offender.

Update: As commented below, MySpace does indeed use facial recognition technology provided by Sentinel Tech. 

Neil at The Interactive has some food for thought. While MySpace is still ahead in terms of eyeballs looking at the site, current trends indicate that Facebook is gaining, and fast.

The culture at Facebook is more tightly knit, whereas the fake profiles, spammers, and corporate profiles on MySpace are pushing users away.

Linda at The Social Networking Weblog has a different take. She feels that in order for Facebook to make significant gains on MySpace, they’ll have to start making their profiles more customizable, as MySpace pages currently are.

I personally think that the site that ends up with the most kids, wins.

Facebook is driving hard for the younger market. With new widgets like Fluff Friends, it makes you wonder: What 10 year old girl could resist a cute furry creature for their Facebook profile?

MySpace isn’t slacking in the battle for your kids eyeballs either. Just yesterday the entire MySpace homepage was pushing the new Simpsons cartoon movie.

Regardless of which site wins, parents need to be aware of both sites and know just how hard they’re trying to get your kid to sign up.

Kevin Millsaps, a 23-year-old man of Staatsburg New York was arrained yesterday for committing sexual acts on two young girls he met on MySpace. One girl was 12 and the other girl was only 11 years old.

A quick MySpace search turns up a MySpace profile that fits the bill (Kevin Millsaps - 23 - Staatsburg). You can view the alleged scumbag’s profile here: http://www.myspace.com/xcaliba

Source article

Update: Found Kevin’s mugshot in the following article that appeared shortly after his arrest in January.  View the article and mugshot here.  It also has more details on his case.

… By a 25-year-old man by the name of Patrick Lee Kenney. Fortunately, the young girl’s mother was monitoring her MySpace activity and discovered graphic pictures of Patrick on her daughter’s computer. She then got police to pose as her daughter and arranged a meeting. Patrick Kenney showed up and was arrested on encouraging child sex abuse and attempted rape charges.

This story fortunately has a happy ending because mom was keeping an eye on what her daughter was doing on MySpace. All the legislation in the world can’t replace good old fashioned parenting.

I found out about this article on MyCrimeSpace but the original article is from the local newspaper in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where the crime took place.

First child predators, now this. MySpace is now being used by drug dealers to sell their stash to children. Marijuana and crack cocaine - now available on your local drug dealer’s MySpace profile.

From the article:

Officers with the Punta Gorda Police Department say the popular website MySpace is quickly becoming the new street corner for drug dealers.

In Charlotte County alone, there have been seven drug busts in the last three days and nine in the last two months - all of which the people were found trying to sell drugs through their MySpace page.

Charlotte resident Rosemary Serafino, 54, was busted for trying to trade hundreds of dollars worth of pills for crack.

During a simple search for the word “marijuana” on the MySpace site, there were 212,000 hits. For “crack cocaine,” there were more than 10,000 references.

Police also recommended that parents remain vigilant and keep an eye on their children’s MySpace usage.

Police say want to make sure parents know what their kids are doing on MySpace.

“If you’re not monitoring them and they’re getting with the wrong crowd, they’re going to be doing things and possibly come into contact with us,” said Lewis.

Check out the full disturbing article here.

A recent InSafe survey shows that a whopping 57% of all teens post private, sensitive information on their MySpace and Bebo profiles. Of those teens, 33% of them didn’t even know if their profiles were public or private.

Kids under 10 years old were the most oblivious to privacy issues. Privacy awareness increased for kids 10 to 13 years old, and steadily decreased for teens 14-18.

Parents: The best thing you can do is to have a talk with your kids, and it’s never too early to have that conversation … unless your child is really, really young. Once they start using the computer, it’s best to set some ground rules and use monitoring software to keep an eye on them.

A quick Google search brings up some helpful tips from Microsoft: A Parent’s Guide to Online Safety. All ages from 2 to 17 are covered.

Justice was served today as Bret T. Lepore was sentenced to one to two years for arranging sexual encounters with two 14-year-olds he met on MySpace.com in December 2005.

Beltrami also ordered Lepore to serve five years of probation, maintain full-time employment, perform 70 hours of community service and read the book “Every Man’s Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time.”

Lepore had sex with both girls at his apartment and again with one of the victims in his car while it was parked behind the Schoeneck Moravian Church in Upper Nazareth Township.

(Full article)

Shaun Brown of Newfield pleaded guilty to threatening a 13-year old Ohio girl over the Internet.

Brown originally met the girl in an online chat room for cheerleaders, court documents said, and pursued her with sexually explicit instant messages.
With threats of harm to her and her family, Brown coerced the girl into exposing her breasts to a Web camera and then posted one of the photographs, along with her name and address, on MySpace.com — an online social network site potentially accessible to millions of people.

The girl didn’t tell her parents about Brown or the threats until he put her image on MySpace.com.

View the full article here.

Sex offenders preying on a 14 year old girl with a MySpace profile.  From the article:

Two Buchanan County sex offenders accused of having sex with a 14-year-old girl they met on the Internet have been charged with third-degree sexual abuse.

Officials say Scott Seehawer and Winston Ramsdale met the girl through the online hangout MySpace. They’re accused of taking the girl from her home in Hiawatha to their home in rural Walker last month. Both men are registered on the state’s sexual offender registry.

In an effort to silence some of the negative buzz MySpace has been receiving lately, Reuters reports that MySpace has teamed up with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and will begin the MySpace AMBER Alert program.   This will notify MySpace users in designated areas when a child has been abducted.

This is good news.  Hopefully Facebook, as the #2 social networking site, will adapt something like this as well.