MySpace Restrains Adults Who Access Teens’ Profiles

By Maggie Sharp

By Maggie Sharp
Daily Texan ( U. Texas )

(U-WIRE) AUSTIN, Texas — MySpace.com announced Wednesday that it would implement new safety measures to protect children from Internet sexual predators. Starting next week, users 18 and older will no longer be able to “friend” and access the profiles of 14- and 15-year-old users unless they already know their e-mail addresses or full name, according to The Associated Press. The announcement comes on the heels of a $30 million lawsuit filed against MySpace and News Corp. Monday by a Travis County teenager and her mother, claiming the Web site neglected to provide security measures that would have prevented a sexual assault the teenager suffered by an older man she met on MySpace.com. MySpace is a social networking site that currently has more than 80 million registered users and an estimated 30 billion page views per month, according to court documents. Pete Solis, the 19-year-old who allegedly sexually assaulted the 14-year-old girl, met the teenager on Myspace.com and told her that he was a high school senior who played on the football team, according to court documents. After several phone conversations, they arranged to meet, and Solis allegedly sexually assaulted the girl. MySpace does not have any verification process to prove users are the age they claim to be online, “effectively providing a complete blanket of anonymity,” attorney Adam Loewy wrote in the lawsuit. The suit comes after attorneys general from four states, including Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, requested that the Web site change security settings to prevent adult users from accessing the MySpace profiles of minors — such as requiring a credit card number for age verification and banning minors under the age of 16 from the Web site. “Although I understand that you currently use an age verification system,” Abbott said in a letter to MySpace CEO Christopher DeWolfe, “our investigators have found it uncomfortably easy in a relatively short period of time to locate many underage profiles on your site.” The lawsuit also alleges the Web site actively and passively markets itself to teens, since 22 percent of MySpace visitors are minors and the surge in the popularity of the Web site is due to the underage users demographic. MySpace did not return phone calls Wednesday. Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

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