Under mounting pressure from law enforcement and parents, MySpace has agreed to take steps to protect youngsters from online sexual predators and bullies, including searching for ways to better verify users' ages.The hugely popular online hangout will create a task force of industry professionals to improve the safety of users, and other social networking sites will be invited to participate. "We must keep telling children that they're not just typing into a computer. They're sharing themselves with the world," said North Carolina Attorney Roy Cooper.
The deal comes as sites such as MySpace and Facebook have grown exponentially in recent years, with teenagers making up a large part of their membership. This has created a new potential venue for sexual predators who lie about their age to lure young victims, and for cyber bullies who send threatening and anonymous messages.
Monday's announcement was short on specifics about how improvements would be carried out. Skeptics doubt MySpace and similar sites can eliminate online predation because age verification technology is difficult to implement and predators are good at circumventing restrictions.
Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org, a children's Internet safety group, said the agreement was a good first step but could have unforeseen consequences.
"There's no system that will work for age verification without putting kids at risk," she said. "Age verification requires that you have a database of kids and if you do, that database is available to hackers and anyone who can get into it."
Aftab estimates that 20 percent of teens who have made contact with people online have followed up with face-to-face meetings, and there are numerous examples of sexual abuse arising from MySpace encounters.
MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has more than 110 million active users worldwide, and Facebook claims more than 61 million active users.
Over the last two years, MySpace said it has implemented over 100 safety and security innovations, including using new technology to identify and remove registered six offenders from the site and pushing for tougher laws in this area. The company also said that it hopes other sites follow its lead in pushing for tougher standards.
"We thank the attorneys general for a thoughtful and constructive conversation on Internet safety," said MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam in a statement. "This is an industrywide challenge, and we must all work together to create a safer Internet."
Facebook said it welcomed the increased vigilance. "We are happy to work further with the states to develop and deploy strategies to protect kids online," the company said in a statement.
Under the agreement, profiles for users under age 16 will be set to private so no strangers can get information from their profile, users can block anyone over 18 from contacting them, and people over 18 cannot add anyone under 16 as a friend in their network unless they have their last name or their email address.
