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MySpace Uses Sentinel SAFE to Provide All 50 States Valuable Intelligence on Registered Sex Offenders

Posted on: Monday, 21 May 2007, 12:00 CDT

MySpace announced today that it is providing the Multi-State Attorney General Executive Committee valuable information on registered sex offenders that the company has identified and deleted from the popular social networking site with the use of Sentinel SAFE.

"In addition to immediately removing registered sex offenders from MySpace, our plans have always been to provide the information collected by Sentinel SAFE to law enforcement, including the Attorneys General," said Mike Angus, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Fox Interactive Media. "We're pleased to have worked with Attorneys General Blumenthal and Cooper to devise a solution that allows us to provide this information in a way that enables law enforcement to use it in criminal investigations and probation or parole proceedings. We applaud their continued leadership in this area."

As part of MySpace's ongoing safety efforts, the company is committed to removing any registered sex offenders from the site. After determining that no product existed to accomplish this goal, MySpace undertook Sentinel SAFE. Because e-mail registration legislation has only been enacted in a few states, Sentinel SAFE uses a range of informational factors, aggregated from a maze of state sex offender registries to identify registered sex offenders, after which their profiles are immediately deleted. The software program, conceived in late 2006, was implemented on May 2, 2007, after an extensive period of development and testing.

After productive conversations with Attorneys General Blumenthal and Cooper, the parties have developed a process to expedite the delivery of useful information to enable the Attorneys General to use it in their pursuit of any of these individuals who are breaking the law.

"We have zero tolerance for sexual predators on MySpace and took the initiative to create this first of its kind tool ourselves because nothing previously existed. We look forward to working collaboratively with the Attorneys General on all future efforts to make the Internet a safer place for teens," said Hemanshu Nigam, Chief Security Officer, MySpace. "We will continue to promote legislation requiring sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses so they can be kept off social networking sites in the first place and urge other social networking sites to join our lead and implement technologies designed to keep predators away from younger users."

About MySpace.com

MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc., is the premier lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, discovering popular culture, and making a positive impact on the world. By integrating web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, e-mail, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, college communities, and member forums, MySpace has created a connected community. As the second ranked web domain in terms of page views1, MySpace is the most widely-used and highly regarded site of its kind and is committed to providing the highest quality member experience. MySpace will continue to innovate with new features that allow its members to express their creativity and share their lives, both online and off. MySpace's international network includes localized community sites in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Australia, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Latin America.

1Among the top 2000 domains comScore Media Metrix, April 2007. For more information on comScore Networks, please go to http://www.comscore.com.

Source: Business Wire

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