By Seven Weaver Producer
News 3 On Your Side, Associated Press, CBS News
A lot of parents can rest a little easier now that Myspace.com is teaming up with law enforcement from across the country to protect children from sexual predators.News 3 On Your Side, Associated Press, CBS News
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Stumble It!According to MySpace... about 300,000 new people sign up on their site everyday... many of them children.
To protect the children from sexual predators on-line, Myspace joined with Attorneys General from across the country to come up with new safety measures.
If parents don't want their children on myspace, they can submit their child's e-mail address to a registry which will block them from the site.
Myspace has implemented technology to help prevent children under 14 from using the site.
And now all users under 18 will automatically have private profiles which means they can only be viewed by people they've approved.
Myspace has a long list of new safety measures for their site...
-- reached with more than 45 states
-- steps taken to prevent sexual predators from using site
-- company to participate in working groups to develop new technologies
-- develop way to verify ages of users
(Other social networking sites will be invited to participate)
-- accepting independent monitoring and changes the structure of its site
-- allow parents to submit children's e-mail addresses
(prevents anyone from misusing the addresses to set up profiles)
-- make the default setting "private" for 16- and 17-year-old users
-- respond within 72 hours to complaints about inappropriate content
-- devote more staff and resources to classify photographs and discussion groups.
-- strengthen software to find underage users
-- create high school section for users under 18 years old.
The states are hoping other sites will join a task force to create industry-wide safety standards for things like verifying the age of users, identifying predators, and reporting inappropriate content.