Attorney General says at least 439 convicted sex offenders have MySpace.com pages

Attorney General Jay Nixon recently provided the Missouri State Highway Patrol with the names and other information of 169 additional convicted sex offender identified as having pages on the popular social networking Web site, MySpace.com. Nixon has now provided a total of 439 names of Missouri sex offenders to the highway patrol and has asked the patrol to examine the data to look for parole violations by offenders who may be barred from using a computer or contacting minors.

"Our investigation into the use of Web sites such as MySpace.com for sex offenders is ongoing," Nixon said. "We will continue to work to identify and catalogue those who attempt to use the site as a means of committing criminal acts."

Nixon said MySpace will continue its policy of immediately deleting the name of any user it identifies as a sex offender and will preserve that offender's account information to forward to Nixon's office.

"As we have seen, there are some sex offenders who may think that they can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet to continue to prey upon Missouri children," Nixon said. "But the continued action of my office and my colleagues in other states sends a clear message to those who think they can operate in the shadows."

Nixon stressed the importance of parents monitoring their kids' activity on the Internet, and to report to law enforcement any suspicious activity they encounter.

Over a period of two weeks, the Daily Mail polled visitors to www.nevadadailymail.com, asking, "How much risk do you believe there is that sex offenders will contact potential victims through sites such as MySpace.com?"

In the poll, 45. 7 percent of respondents said, "Too much. I would never use such a site"; 30.4 percent said, " There is some risk, but it wouldn't keep me from using the sites"; 14.1 percent said there's not much risk; and 7.6 percent said they believe such sites are safe.

In August 2006, the Nevada Daily Mail published a news item that asked users how they felt about Web community sites such as MySpace.com, and users said they're comfortable using the sites, but they're careful to keep private information and certain personal identifiers confidential, and not available for public viewing.