My Space
By debbie97420
@debbie97420 (15)
United States
January 31, 2008 3:27pm CST
Hi Everybody
This is about my space and your or your family. This is an absolutely true incident that happened to a friend of mine last week. My friend has a very close and trusting relationship with her children so good in fact, that they willing give her their passwords to any and all their e-mail accounts. She checks their accounts with their knowledge at least twice a week to make sure that everything is ok. Both of her children have accounts at My Space and there hasn't been anything wrong until last Thursday as she checked her 14 year old daughters e-mail account she found an unread e-mail from a 21 year old male propositioning her daughter. She was shocked and horrified with what she read thank goodness her daughter had not read it it. Since she wasn't sure what to do but wanted to take action right away she called her brother who is in law enforcement. This 21 year old male is local so her brother called our local FBI and an agent came out right away.They set-up a sting and got the guy on Friday.He has been arrested and charged with propositioning a minor and lewd and lascivious behavior.The FBI said there is a security hole in My Space and they were going to see that it is closed. That means that anybody can go into your profile or your e-mail and change things or leave a message and generally mess up your site. My question is after hearing another one of these stories would you let your child have an account at MY Space and if yes why? Also if they have an account would you ask them to close it? If no shy not? Also I am reputable internet marketer and I use My Space but I am thinking about closing my account so my next question is should I ? or should I wait and see if things will change?
3 responses
@tinkerick (1257)
• United States
31 Jan 08
Currently my children don't have Myspace accounts - I see no reason for them to yet. (oldest is 12) However when they want one, I will allow them one, but with the same rules as we use with their emails - we have the passwords and the right to check their accounts at any given time.
MySpace is given entirely too much blame. They can only do so much with the type of service they provide. If it is a security hole that allows people to change other peoples accounts - then yes, that has to be fixed. But I don't like it when people blame MySpace for the actual incident where a male propositions a teen. MySpace can't watch everyone's posts or messages just like MyLot can't catch all abusive discussions/responses. It is up to the user (and in this case the user's parents) to watch the activity online. Which is exactly what your friend did so kudos to her for being a responsible mom! Tink
1 person likes this
@jla45772 (67)
• United States
31 Jan 08
I have an myspace also! Myspace was started for friends to go online and chat and send messages to one another..but know there are alot of people who go on there and sign up under a fake name and age and pretend to be that person and chat with kids and lure them in..Which I don't think myspace has to do with because it is not like myspace is the one setting up the accounts and chatting with under age kids. But i think that myspace is teaming up with lots of security places to get the predators offline and to make it harder for them to get online. I do feel sorry for all of the under age kids that have this happen to them and hope there is more that can be done to stop this. Just make sure that you do not post your address and phone numbers or anything on your account and I think it would be ok. I have also seen on the tv that there was a guy that went online and viewed profile picts of a younger child and seen in the background the name of the school she went to and went to that school looking for her and followed her home! So just be very careful and you should be ok. I could go on forever about this subject but I have to go..
@wisedragon (2325)
• Philippines
31 Jan 08
It's really silly how myspace has so many fake profiles. I think friendster is more decent. I don't really want to be strict, but it seems necessary since there are so many predators on the Internet. Should my future children want myspace accounts, I will have to require the passwords to make sure no one is trying to victimize them.
Thanks to your friend's vigilance there is one less pedophile out there.
