Safety for young users of MySpace has always been a concern for parents and safety experts, but the issue was thrusted even further into the limelight when the mother of a Texas teenager, who claims she was raped by a man she met through the site, filed a $30 million lawsuit against MySpace. The mother claims that the social networking giant fell short in protecting its teenage users even though there were warnings of possible dangers.
MySpace responded to concerns of safety late last week when it revealed new measures that it would take in order to maintain distance between teens and adults.
The new measures require that users that are 18 and over know a 14- or 15-year-old friend’s e-mail address or full name before they are added to their list of friends. If the adult user can not provide this information they will be prevented from viewing the personal information on the young teenager’s profile.
Another safety measure that MySpace will make available to its users is the option of making their profiles private.
On top of these two safety precautions, MySpace said that it will work to improve the way advertisements are targeted to its users. This regards the maturity level of some of the ads run on the site.
Despite these steps taken by the site, safety experts are still not satisfied. Monique Nelson, executive vice president of Web Wise Kids, says that “They’re going to lie about their ages. There’s no way to check age verification. In that respect, I don’t think that’s going to be very effective.”
The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA)’s executive director, Ron Teixeira, thinks that these are steps in the right direction, but that “the new measures they put in place cannot be truly enforced because it’s almost impossible to verify someone’s age on the Internet.”
He added that if predators really wanted to skirt the electronic gap between those 18 and over and users under 16, “they can easily do it.”
Hemanshu Nigam, security director at MySpace, said in a statement that “MySpace remains dedicated to a multi-pronged approach that also involves education and collaboration with law enforcement, teachers, parents, and members.”
In an interview with BusinessWeek.com, Nigam alluded to what could be the best line of defense against sexual predators that use social networks such as MySpace to mislead teens.
“We learned as we move forward that more teens are talking to teens about these safety issues and that it’s, therefore, essential that we educate our teen population the same way we educate them about the offline world. It’s critical that we translate those same life lessons to the online world.”
Sources:
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3615621
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/06/22/
myspace.safety.ap/
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/
jun2006/tc20060624_365641.htm
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