Still the Most Reliable Route to Online Safety

Two years ago, following the reports that some of its teenage users were abducted by sex predators, the online networking site MySpace commissioned Sentinel Safe Tech Holdings Corp., a background verification firm, to create a national database of sex offenders. Prior to the existence of the national database, information on convicted sex offenders was available only locally, mostly manually. Nowadays, although elusive internet users can reach far and wide, with no territorial limit, it's also a lot easier to obtain accurate data due to the transparency the national database now affords us. Over the last two years MySpace has identified and barred some 90,000 registered sex offenders from using the site, and has made the data available to law enforcement agencies. The question remains, where are those 90,000 sex offenders going to resurface?

It naturally followed that the newer Facebook might also host substantial numbers of convicted sex offenders. Facebook previously claimed their site has yet to handle a case of a registered sex offender meeting a minor, because they enforce a real-name culture which creates a safer, more trusted environment. Yet, how can anyone be sure that members are actually using real names? Or that a person going by a certain name is not a sex offender? Facebook is still ripe with possibilities. New evidence suggests that a large portion of sex offenders from MySpace are now on Facebook. Sentinel reports that of the 90,000 removed from MySpace, they effortlessly found over 8,000 offenders on Facebook. They believe the real number is 15 to 20 times that. Facebook agreed to identify and remove the profiles of all registered sex offenders, and once they received the list of matches, disabled all the known accounts.

That's all well and good, but not nearly enough. To date, not all known sex offenders - not to mention the unknown ones - were found and removed from Facebook, or even MySpace. It's also safe to assume that the national database of registered sex offenders can't possibly contain every single dangerous individual out there. Registered sex offenders have been found guilty of sex crimes and ordered to register with law enforcement officials. That does not mean that ALL sex offenders were identified, registered and will subsequently be banned from the internet altogether. Potential first-time or unidentified sex offenders are still out there, finding ways to infiltrate new social networking sites, dating sites, and various chat rooms. To us regular consumers, this means we can't let our guard down. The burden is still on us to protect ourselves and our children, and we can't rely on someone else to do it for us. That means running background checks on every stranger we come across online, who has the potential to have a negative impact on our lives.