Posted on Thursday, January 17 2008 @ 7:15 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Social networking site MySpace is working together with 49 U.S. state attorneys on a broad set of guidelines to protect youths on the Internet:
MySpace, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, agreed to take further steps to ensure safety, including developing an e-mail registry that would allow parents to prohibit their kids from creating an online profile for the network, according to the attorneys general.
Home to 110 million users globally, MySpace will also make the default profile setting for 16 and 17-year-olds on its site "private" so they can only be contacted by people they know, making it harder for predators to find them. "We're joining forces to find the most effective ways to keep young children off these sites and to protect the kids who do use them," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said in a statement.
"This agreement sets a new standard for social networking sites that have been quick to grow but slow to recognize their responsibility to keep kids safe," he said.
MySpace has come under state legal scrutiny in the last two years after some of its youth members fell prey to adult predators posing as minors.
Source: Reuters
