Wired finds 700 sex offenders on MySpace

Steve Safran October 20th, 2006

Wired News is releasing the results of a nifty bit of software one of its reporters wrote - along with the software, too — that found some 700 registered sex offenders with MySpace accounts. Wired’s Kevin Poulsen wrote a Perl script that cross-checked sex offender registries with MySpace accounts. (Listen to NPR interview.) Not all 700 were misbehaving - but he did find one man with an especially disturbing space that appeared to solicit minors. He reported it to police who subsequently arrested the man. (Of note: Poulsen served five years back in the day for some notorious hacker exploits. He now uses his powers for good.)

8 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Rocker  |  October 20th, 2006 at 6:09 am

    Is it illegal for sex offenders to post profile pages on social networking sites? Do the sites have a legal obligation to screen for this? Conversely, do they have the legal ability to do so (or do anything about it)? If so, while we’re at it, what other kinds of “objectionables” do we want to screen out?

    Seriously, what’s the point? 700 out of 120,000,000 is probably far below the % in the population at large. Maybe we should be congratulating MySpace instead of feeding the “dangerous internet” drumbeat.

    As a parent, I’d really like to know what the takeaway is. Or is it just another reminder to stay engaged with what your kids are up to online?

  • 2. Safran  |  October 20th, 2006 at 6:53 am

    MySpace had said they could not filter out sex offenders with their existing tech. Poulsen set out to prove it could be done, and did so in his spare time. Listen to the radio interview - it’s quite good.

  • 3. Alyssa  |  October 23rd, 2006 at 8:47 am

    Didn’t myspace have some recent problems with inappropriate profile info and underage members?

  • 4. AV  |  May 15th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    How many sex offenders are reading wired now???

  • 5. Ali  |  June 27th, 2007 at 7:34 am

    sex

  • 6. mohamad  |  September 10th, 2007 at 9:39 am

    wapo

  • 7. m,akbar  |  December 5th, 2007 at 9:03 am

    0920307419588

  • 8. 00ac1991d047&hellip  |  May 12th, 2008 at 7:12 pm

    00ac1991d047…

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