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Being near the pinnacle of the popularity stakes is no walk in the park. If you're MySpace.com, you may have a horde of advertisers falling over themselves to reach your growing member base (see: The MySpace Economy). But you'll also have a few, shall we say, bad apples. Exploiting the cornucopia of young visitors and the veil of anonymity that MySpace brings, some sexual predators have already been arrested for targeting minors on the Web site, while last week more than 200,000 MySpace profiles were removed for displaying "objectionable" content.
Now the Web site bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (nyse: NWS - news - people ) in July 2005, is seeking to warn its users about the dangers that may lurk within.Banner ads appearing at the top of MySpace.com will put it thusly: "1 in 5 kids online is sexually solicited. Online predators know what they're doing. Do you?" The question is being aimed particularly at the 22% of site users who are registered as under 18, many of whom may well be under the age 14 limit. MySpace already uses a computer program to detect members who are likely to be under 14, and flagged profiles are deleted.
It's part of an ongoing campaign aimed at warning youngsters and parents about sexual predators on the internet. Ernie Allen, the President of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said the campaign was trying to persuade children not to give out personal details online or advertise where they are. "The person with whom they may be interacting may not be who they say they are," he told the Associated Press. More…