December 13, 2009
The State of New York has wrung agreements from 13 additional social networking sites, including those owned by Google, Yahoo!, and AOL, to remove New York sex offenders from their sites.
The agreements follows New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's announcement in early December that the two largest social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace, had successfully removed over 3,500 sex offenders.
Cuomo says 15 major social networking companies have agreed to use New York's Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) to purge registered sex offenders from their sites. The law requires all registered sex offenders to register their email accounts, screen names and any other Internet identifiers with the state Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). That information is then made available to social networking sites. Several other companies continue to ignore this critical measure to make the Internet safer.
"It is no secret that sexual predators abuse social networking Web sites to find and manipulate victims and to insinuate themselves into their victims' lives," Cuomo said. "e-STOP allows social networking Web sites to identify these sex predators and help prevent them from harming again. The country's most popular social networking sites have taken an important step in making the Internet safer by using e-STOP to purge sex offenders from their sites. That some companies are continuing to ignore the e-STOP database is not only inexcusable, it is potentially dangerous."
On December 1, Cuomo issued letters to 17 social networking Web sites urging them to increase efforts protecting their users from sexual predators. To date, twelve of these Web sites -- AOL's Bebo.com. Google's Orkut.com, Yahoo!'s Flickr.com, BlackPlanet.com, Classmates.com, Flixster.com, Fotolog.com, hi5.com, MyLife.com, Stickam.com, and Tagged.com -- have agreed to use e-STOP data from the state to find and disable accounts linked to registered sex offenders. Imeem.com was recently bought by MySpace and will also purge its network of New York sex offenders. Multiply.com, which did not receive a letter, has also requested the e-STOP data.
Information about the accounts will be shared with law enforcement authorities. Despite the proactive measures taken by the 15 sites so far, some other social networking Web sites continue to ignore the availability and utility of the e-STOP information, potentially allowing New York sex offenders to use their sites, Cuomo said. The Attorney General specially called out Friendster.com, Buzznet.com, eSpin.com, Habbo.com, and LiveJournal.com, as sites that have yet to commit to using the list.
Before using these sites, consumers should ask the companies why they are refusing to purge sex offenders from their sites, Cuomo said.
