Seven MySpace Sex Offenders Arrested in Texas

Seven convicted sex offenders with MySpace profiles have been arrested from various cities in Texas, as a direct result of the Attorneys General request for MySpace's cooperation in identifying registered sex offenders on the social networking site.

The seven men were arrested during a two week operation led by the Cyber Crimes and Fugitive units under the Texas Attorney General's office. This is the first time they have caught so many registered offenders in MySpace. One man arrested had just been charged for failing to register as a sex offender and another three of the men arrested were on parole, which may be revoked because of this. Texas is not the only state the investigators are targeting, more than 300 sex offenders with MySpace accounts were found in Kansas State.

MySpace is working with law enforcement officers across the country, so more arrests will follow soon. Whether this will help the MySpace image in the press or makes it worse is yet to be determined. MySpace has been a target for a long time for having many sex offenders in its user base with many children among them. MySpace offers Zephyr security program which will protect children in MySpace, but the parents should know how to use it, not many implement such measures. Hopefully these arrests will deter the sex offenders.

Since MySpace doesn't authenticate every individual, I don't know how they will be able to control sex offenders when they give false information to join MySpace. One thing amazes me is these offenders despite all the arrests every day and news reporting, they keep doing it again and again.

What do you think about this by the website providing the user information to law enforcement and how they can prevent the offenders from coming back?