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Today, MySpace will deliver the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders who have been blocked from the popular social networking site over the past 24 months.  They are take this action in response to a subpoena from Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's Attorney General.

Removing sex offenders off the site has been a major goal for MySpace. Last year, they reached a child protection deal with 49 states.  That deal initiated a series of safety precautions including policing the site for predatory content and removing any known sex offenders (which it had already been doing on its own).

MySpace now reports that, thanks to these vigorous efforts, 36 percent fewer registered sex offenders are now trying to join the site.

This information comes to light thanks to a new firestorm of claims and counterclaims as to just how much of a problem sexual predators are on MySpace and other social networks.

Recently, a Hong Kong company (now being sued by MySpace) hired a private investigator who claims that he found many sex offenders still using the popular website, despite MySpace’s repeated efforts to block their access.  Meanwhile, a report sponsored by MySpace and other companies found the threat to children on social networks overblown.

The KIDS Act of 2007, which became law in October of 2008, requires that sex offenders register their real e-mail address and instant messenger screennames with the National Sex Offender Registry. Similar legislation has also been passed in 20 states, making it a parole violation not to comply. This information is supposed to help social networks like MySpace and Facebook keep registered sex offenders away from their websites.

MySpace uses a program called Sentinal SAFE (software it helped to develop) to run its member profiles against a database of more than 700,000 known sex offenders.

The program uses all the various state sex offender registries in conjunction with 120 different points of identification—including name, date of birth, photo, scars, and tattoos—to make a positive match and block those members from registering again. The Sentinal software is how MySpace identified the 90,000 blocked sex offenders in question.

UPDATE: It would, in fact, seem that most of the MySpace refugees have migrated over to Facebook, according to TechCrunch.

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Technorati Tags: KIDS Act of 2007, MySpace, MySpace Sex Offenders, National Sex Offender Registry, Sentinel SAFE

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