MySpace bolsters defenses after sex predator suit

By Kenneth Li

NEW YORK (Reuters) – MySpace.com, the top online teen
hangout, said on Tuesday it will bolster protection for minors
amid a flurry of complaints about sexual predators prowling the
site and a lawsuit filed on Monday by a teenage girl charging
it with negligent security practices.

By next week, members over 18 years old would have to know
the e-mail or first and last name of any 14- to 15-year-old
member whom they want to contact, the company said.

Any of MySpace’s more than 85 million members would also be
able to choose to hide their online profiles from strangers and
only make them viewable to pre-approved friends, the company
said.

“We’re going to build a foundation of safety and security
so that social networking is a safe place and a well-lit
community,” Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer of News
Corp. unit Fox Interactive Media, told Reuters.

A 14-year-old girl from Austin, Texas, on Monday sued
MySpace and its owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., for $30
million, saying she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old man
she met on the site.

The suit charges the company with failing to take enough
precautions to protect minors from sexual predators.

MySpace said it was reviewing the lawsuit, and had for
several months been developing safety measures that would make
it more difficult for strangers to contact minors using the
site.

The company is scheduled to present its plans on Thursday
at an event sponsored by the National Center for Missing &
Exploited Children.

MIXED BLESSING

The social networking site, where teens post elaborate
profiles of their lives and interests, meet new people and
share their taste in new music, has become one of the
Internet’s fastest growing properties since News Corp.
purchased it for $580 million last year.

The purchase made Murdoch the toast of Wall Street at a
time when rivals fretted about losing television viewers and
newspapers readers to the Internet and video games.

But its early success has been tempered by reports of
sexual predators on the prowl for children on the site. In
March two men were arrested in Connecticut and charged with
having illegal sexual contact with young girls — one 11 years
old and the other 14 — they contacted through MySpace.

The minimum age for MySpace membership is 14, the company
said, but the requirement is hard to enforce with existing
technology, Nigam said.

The Texas suit “alleges that MySpace.com had full knowledge
that sexual predators were contacting young children on the Web
site but did nothing to stop it,” according to a statement by
law firm Barry & Loew LLP, which is representing the girl.

A News Corp. spokeswoman said the company had no immediate
comment on the charges.

In response to the March attacks and subsequent public
outcry, MySpace in May hired Nigam, a former prosecutor against
Internet child exploitation at the U.S. Justice Department, to
lead security efforts.

MySpace said its advertising policy will also be altered to
target appropriate age groups. For instance, ads for mature
online dating sites will not be presented to minors.