quote:
NEW YORK - MySpace.com is planning new restrictions on how adults may contact its younger users in response to growing concerns about the safety of teenagers who frequent the popular online social networking site.
ADVERTISEMENT
The site already prohibits kids 13 and under from setting up accounts and displays only partial profiles for those registered as 14 or 15 years old unless the person viewing the profile is already on the teen's list of friends.
Under the changes, announced Wednesday and taking effect next week, MySpace users who are 18 or over could no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name.
Any user will still be able to get a partial profile of younger users by searching for other attributes, such as display name. The difference is that currently, adults can then request to be added to a youth's list to view the full profile; that option will disappear for adults registered as 18 and over.
However, users under 18 can still make such contact, and MySpace has no mechanism for verifying that users submit their true age when registering. That means adults can sign up as teens and request to join a 14-year-old's list of friends, which would enable the full profiles.
"There is far less than meets the eye in these newly announced MySpace measures," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement. "These steps are inadequat
e because they lack any age verification and leave the minimum age too low."
The partial profiles display gender, age and city. Full profiles describe hobbies, schools and any other personal details a user may provide.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060621/...ltBHNlYwM3MTY-
NEW YORK - MySpace.com is planning new restrictions on how adults may contact its younger users in response to growing concerns about the safety of teenagers who frequent the popular online social networking site.
ADVERTISEMENT
The site already prohibits kids 13 and under from setting up accounts and displays only partial profiles for those registered as 14 or 15 years old unless the person viewing the profile is already on the teen's list of friends.
Under the changes, announced Wednesday and taking effect next week, MySpace users who are 18 or over could no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name.
Any user will still be able to get a partial profile of younger users by searching for other attributes, such as display name. The difference is that currently, adults can then request to be added to a youth's list to view the full profile; that option will disappear for adults registered as 18 and over.
However, users under 18 can still make such contact, and MySpace has no mechanism for verifying that users submit their true age when registering. That means adults can sign up as teens and request to join a 14-year-old's list of friends, which would enable the full profiles.
"There is far less than meets the eye in these newly announced MySpace measures," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement. "These steps are inadequat
e because they lack any age verification and leave the minimum age too low."
The partial profiles display gender, age and city. Full profiles describe hobbies, schools and any other personal details a user may provide.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060621/...ltBHNlYwM3MTY-
Comment