29,000 Sex Offenders on MySpace

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said MySpace.com has discovered more than 29,000 registered sex offenders among its users.

Cooper said in a statement aimed at supporting legislation that would require children under 18 to obtain parental permission before registering on the social networking site that the number of sex offenders on MySpace is four times the number released by the company after a May investigation, Computerworld reported Wednesday.

(The 29,000) includes just the predators who signed up using their real names and not the ones who failed to register or used fake names, Cooper said in his statement.

Cooper was one of eight state attorneys general who demanded the names of the sex offenders in May. The company handed over the information after being subpoenaed.

Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer of MySpace, told Computerworld the site is pleased that we’ve successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead.