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Attorney generals across U.S. reach agreement with MySpace Alabama Attorney General Troy King and 49 other attorneys general announced this week that MySpace has agreed to significant steps to better protect children on its Web site, including creation of a broadbased task force to explore and develop age and identity verification technology. MySpace acknowledged in the agreement the important role of this technology in social networking safety and agreed to find and develop online identity authentication tools. The attorneys general advocate age and identity verification, calling it vital to better protecting children using social networking sites from online sexual predators and inappropriate material. Other specific changes and policies that MySpace agreed to develop include: allowing parents to submit their children's email addresses so MySpace can prevent anyone using those email addresses from setting up profiles, making the default setting "private" for profiles of 16 and 17 year olds, promising to respond within 72 hours to inappropriate content complaints and committing more staff and/or resources to review and classify photographs and discussion groups. The agreement culminates nearly two years of discussions between MySpace and the attorneys general. The states pushed MySpace for changes after sexual predators repeatedly used the site to victimize children. In the agreement, the attorneys general commend MySpace for its efforts to address social networking safety issues. "As attorney general, and as a father, my highest priority is to protect our children and to stop sexual predators from preying upon their innocence," said Attorney General King. "Unfortunately, the Internet has been abused to allow the most depraved and dangerous among us to invade our homes and gain access to our children. Here in Alabama, we have worked to educate and arm parents against this danger through the Lost in Cyberspace program sponsored by my office and other state and local agencies. Today's agreement with MySpace is an important step to provide meaningful reform that will help keep children safe." Under the agreement, MySpace, with support from the attorneys general, will create and lead an Internet Safety Technical Task Force to explore and develop age and identity verification tools for social networking Web sites. MySpace will invite other social networking sites, age and identify verification experts, child protection groups and technology companies to participate in the task force. The task force will report back to the attorneys general every three months and issue a formal report with findings and recommendations at the end of 2008.
MySpace also will hire a contractor to compile a registry of e-mail addresses provided by parents who want to restrict their child's access to the site. MySpace will bar anyone using a submitted e-mail address from signing in or creating a profile.
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