MySpace donates sex offender database to center
MySpace.com will donate a national computer database on U.S. sex offenders to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the popular social-networking site said Monday.
Sex offender data is collected by individual state authorities. News Corp.'s MySpace and background verification company Sentinel Tech Holdings developed a technology that combines close to 50 U.S. state registries in an aim to help police keep track of an estimated 600,000 convicted sex offenders.
MySpace has increased efforts to block convicted adult sex predators from the site, which is a meeting place for a large population of teens attracted to the service to share photos, blogs, music and videos.
"We've come a long way from just the milk carton," NCMEC President and Chief Executive Ernie Allen said in a phone interview, referring to a longstanding program where pictures of abducted children appear on the side of milk cartons in the hope that a wider audience will recognize them.
MySpace struck a partnership with Sentinel in December to create the database and has been using it to identify, block or delete the accounts of known sex predators on its service, company executives said.
The database includes photo-matching software tools that can help authorities cross-reference photos or descriptions of predators against registered offenders, especially those who have failed to keep their registration up to date.
About 100,000 of the 600,000 offenders are so-called "non-compliant" cases, NCMEC's Allen said, making them difficult to track. A national database with the cooperation of authorities and businesses that operate online communities could help, he said.
Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer at MySpace parent Fox Interactive Media, said the company was in discussions with other companies to use the database.
Source:http://www.zdnet.com/
Sex offender data is collected by individual state authorities. News Corp.'s MySpace and background verification company Sentinel Tech Holdings developed a technology that combines close to 50 U.S. state registries in an aim to help police keep track of an estimated 600,000 convicted sex offenders.
MySpace has increased efforts to block convicted adult sex predators from the site, which is a meeting place for a large population of teens attracted to the service to share photos, blogs, music and videos.
"We've come a long way from just the milk carton," NCMEC President and Chief Executive Ernie Allen said in a phone interview, referring to a longstanding program where pictures of abducted children appear on the side of milk cartons in the hope that a wider audience will recognize them.
MySpace struck a partnership with Sentinel in December to create the database and has been using it to identify, block or delete the accounts of known sex predators on its service, company executives said.
The database includes photo-matching software tools that can help authorities cross-reference photos or descriptions of predators against registered offenders, especially those who have failed to keep their registration up to date.
About 100,000 of the 600,000 offenders are so-called "non-compliant" cases, NCMEC's Allen said, making them difficult to track. A national database with the cooperation of authorities and businesses that operate online communities could help, he said.
Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer at MySpace parent Fox Interactive Media, said the company was in discussions with other companies to use the database.
Source:http://www.zdnet.com/
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