The Dangers of MySpace

Girl Threatens to ‘Kill Bush’ on MySpace.

OK, so I’m a little disturbed by this story and the amount of idiots in the world (not that I didn’t know that there are a lot of idiots in the world but they’ve seemingly all come out of hiding today.  I was scrounging around Digg today and found this article linked above about a 14-year old girl posting messages and a collage on her MySpace account about killing the president.  I think it’s absurd for one and for two, regardless of whether you like the current president or not, it’s a stupid idea to even think about doing harm to the government or to its employees.

Yet, some of the users on Digg find it amusing and want to test the government’s power and many of them are saying worse stuff than what the 14-year old girl said.  You can read some of the comments for yourself.  Many of the more hateful and ludicrous comments are buried.  Some of them are along the lines of actually repeating what the 14-year old said and testing the government in hopes that the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security will come and visit their houses.

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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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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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