The Dangers of MySpace

“MySpace doesn’t really have a way to police that.”  That sums up this clip.  It’s a about sex offenders who are portraying themselves as young teens on MySpace as is a class taught by the Learning Annex put on by Saturday Night Live.  While it’s funny, it also reinforces the fact that MySpace doesn’t have a way of policing anything, nor do other social networks (although other social networks are safer). 

MySpace said they couldn’t do it so someone else did and ran it against MySpace user’s sites and found 744 sex offenders on the site. Of course that’s just a small percentage of the millions using MySpace. However, it’s still not 100% effective. Recognition definitely goes where it deserves to the author of the script but it’s simply not enough since it’s extremely easy to hide your real identity on MySpace.

Easy enough, here’s proof from the article that agrees with the fact that MySpace’s security is outdated and ineffective: “Their comment board is innocent; their image gallery contains a wedding photo or two; the underage friends on their list, if they have any, turn out to be relatives, or adults lying about their age to game MySpace’s old security model — in which only 14- and 15-year-olds enjoyed private profiles.” So what really is an effective way to stop sex offenders for exploiting the future of America?

I proposed a solution in this post. The idea is to have MySpace user enter a valid credit card and do a temporary authorization on the card. In other words, it is still a free service but the temporary authorization validates your identity and that should be enough to keep sex offenders off of the site. You might ask well what about credit card fraud? It’s not often that credit card fraud is associated with sex offenders. The two types of criminals are often no correlated and don’t fall in the same categories. You also might ask well, what if I give someone my credit card to a user for verification on MySpace? Let’s say it’s your son or daughter in the first example. Well, then you’d feel a little morally obligated to know why they wanted the card in the first place. It’s too often that parents get caught off-guard because their son or daughter chooses not to tell them of their activities online. Whether the child or teen feels invincible online or like s/he is guarded and anonymous, that is clearly NOT the case. Or it could be that the child or teen doesn’t feel his/her parents’ need to know in which case they feel that they are “adult” enough to know what is right and wrong and to sense danger.

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I couldn’t find this more amusing knowing my hatred for MySpace, the popular (although God knows why) social networking site among teens and radio DJ’s, it seems.

My account was deleted last night for some reason, as was some other accounts. Why you might ask? No reason from MySpace and no warning whatsoever. Am I upset? Not a bit when I had a paid hosting account that doesn’t rely on MySpace’s shoddy network that often fails. What’s more amusing is that the site randomly deletes users on a regular basis for no apparent reason most of the time.

As an example, take a look at a few threads on the internet about people having their MySpace accounts deleted.

MySpace Deletes 200K ‘Objectionable’ Profiles

My MySpace Got Deleted!!!

Account Deleted Again…

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There was an interesting article today online from WorldNetDaily that claims that MySpace is a host for wannabe terrorists.

Is it credible is the first thing you might ask and that’s a valid question. Sure enough, the news site backs up its claims with supporting evidence of those profiles on MySpace that are terrorist related, including links to some persons in the United States that are “pro-Allah”, so to speak. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a wide variety of religions in this Nation, however it does somewhat strike close to home when you see people actively pursing this religion within a country that was attacked by terrorists who did their “will” toward Allah on September 11, 2001. No matter how you look at it, it’s still a bit disturbing.

However, just because the profiles are on MySpace doesn’t mean those people are 1) real or 2) who they say they really are. But that doesn’t mean much, considering there is someone behind the postings who genuinely believes that “The Magnificent 19″ (as one MySpace account claims of the 19 hijackers involved in September 11, 2001) are to be respected and honored for doing what they did.

So what’s the purpose of this post? It’s mainly to parents to think twice about what you want your child to come across. MySpace contains thousands of these types of profiles (not just limited to terrorists but to hate crimes, gangs, etc) that your child could stumble across. You wouldn’t want that, would you? The website, while it prides itself in free speech, is a dangerous place, especially for teens due to the content, graphic nature of posts/sites, and the sexual predators that prowl the site.

Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) proposed bill to block MySpace from libraries, public places

While the bill seems like a good idea, there are numerous reasons why it will fail and not be effective in the way that Congressman Fitzpatrick wants it to be. First off, the bill is still in its infancy, but it needs to be revised a LOT before it can even be remotely considered effective. Currently, the bill would block social networking sites such as MySpace from public places of which include libraries and school networks. That’s all well and good because it will force students to concentrate on an education, which they should be doing anyway in a school environment, but it won’t stop predators. After all, that’s the underlying theme and purpose of the bill, right?

Well, who knows right now due to the fact that bill is exceptionally vague. Besides, if they were to go after the REAL PROBLEMS of MySpace, they would stop the predators and not restrict access to non-predatorial users of the site but rather track down the predators. All this bill currently does it block social networking sites from public places. So what happens when the child goes home? He or she can clearly access the site from that location, a friend’s house, or otherwise (including MySpace enabled cell phones which are a new concept on the market). This is all assuming the parents don’t step in, which is a fundamental problem in itself. Often parents are involved in their child’s activity online and there is that issue of trust. But does it hold up well? That all depends on the child, parents, and how strict the rules are in the household.

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Often on MySpace, users give out too much information and that can either come back to haunt them later on in life with job interviews (or current jobs) as well as even more serious aspects such as tracking down a user. So what information is safe to give out on MySpace? Good question and it’s not as simple as you might think, unless you want to be VERY secure.

MySpace only requires an e-mail address to sign up to their site. It then requires a password and that e-mail address to log in. The e-mail address can be displayed publicly or privately to only select users. It’s recommended that it’s displayed ONLY to friends or better yet not ever put in public, friends list or not. This can often be harvested by spam robots and not only that, it can aid a person in tracking you down if they are determined enough to do so. But there are more serious items that should never be posted in public such as your last name, precise hometown, age (if you’re a minor), address, phone number, IM screen name, etc.

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In recent news, General Attorney for the State of Massachusetts wants the minimum age to create an account on MySpace changed. Tom Reilly claims that the age should be changed from the current 14 years old to 18 years old. While his idea is a step in the right direction, it clearly has a few flaws. Currently, MySpace has no way of knowing your age and states in its policies that anyone violating and misrepresenting their age will be disciplined on the site and could have their account deleted. So if I was to create an account on MySpace and change my age to 99 when I am clearly not that (I am a graduating college senior), I could run the risk of getting my account suspended and/or deleted.

So this brings up the question: what is an effective way of securing MySpace and making it safer? I have a solution. Earlier this year, Mike Domirtz of The Date Safe Show and The Date Safe Project asked that question in his e-newsletter. I took on the challenge of answering him and in a phone interview with him, we discussed what could be done to make MySpace safer. Mike suggested that users of the site be forced to take a survey on internet safety and it would be mandatory that the user passes before enabling him/her to create an account on the site. The questions would be randomly generated so it would prevent (or at least make it harder) to cheat on the quiz. If the user passed, then they would be allowed to have a MySpace account.

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One of the reasons MySpace is so popular amount teens and college students is because of its easy of use and ability to create social networks. However, with the easy of use and social networking comes a huge privacy issue.

When you log into MySpace, you can set up a pseudo homepage where you can add friends, strangers, and just post whatever you want. That’s where the privacy issue comes into play. Anyone can add you as a friend and it’s the end user’s call to accept or reject that request. Just rejecting a request to be a friend of someone doesn’t mean that person can’t stalk you still and view your page. Currently, MySpace has NO protection from the world seeing your profile, interests, etc. The only “security options” (which I beg to differ are really secure) are to block friend requests from bands, preview posted comments before going live on your site, require email or last name to add as a friend, and show my birthday to friends (among other trivial settings that aren’t in any way, shape, or form related to security).

So that leaves the world to read everything else you decide to post about yourself. So why do I pick on MySpace for the end user’s decision to post personal information? Currently, MySpace hasn’t accepted the fact that their site is being used by sexual predators. Their “Safety” page lists nothing important in regards to safety, in essence. It goes into little detail and gives that overtone of “we don’t really care what you post” and we’re going to pretend that the site is safe. In other words, “we’re just putting this safety page up so it looks like we really care.” If they really did have concern for users, they would be more proactive in adding security measures to the site and requiring user identification.

Not to mention the site is overall a horrible place for usability reasons. It’s not valid in any aspect according to W3C HTML standards (the web standards for web code such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript, XML, etc). In addition, most of the sites automatically play music which is not only horrible, but intrusive to your computer and browsing in that if you have your speakers on, you’re going to hear the music regardless. That’s entirely user unfriendly. The list goes on as to why it’s popular, but the main reasons are the simplicity of creating your own site and most importantly, social networking on the site.