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MySpace
Dangers |
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Your Personal Information |
 It's dangerous to think that your family and friends are the only
ones checking out your MySpace page. Because it is a public page, you should
be careful
what kind of information you post about yourself and who you let into your circle of friends.
Two danger areas in a member's profile provide far more information than they probably
realize. The first is where the member goes to school (or went to school)
and the other is the list of comments from friends. Online predators
can learn quite a
bit about someone just by keeping an eye on what their friends say.
Children should be taught the dangers of exposing too much personal information
in any online community such as MySpace, and parents need to follow
up to make sure they're not. If you're not careful, you can share too much information
and find a MySpace predator right at your door, or where you hang out! That's why we
constantly recommend internet monitoring software like
Spector Pro
and IamBigBrother.
With tools like these, you can KNOW EVERYTHING that your child is doing on the internet.
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No Age Verification Process |
 Currently, MySpace offers no means of conclusively verifying the age of new members. It is definitely not
an uncommon thing for an underage minor to obtain membership despite the site’s
minimum age restriction of 14 years old.
The younger a child is, the more prone they are to being taken advantage
of.
In all fairness, this problem is not isolated to MySpace. It is very difficult
to verify the age of anyone on the internet without an extensive process.
The best solution would be some type of credit card verification system. This
would almost guarantee that a parent is involved in the transaction. Obviously,
online communities do not want to make it difficult to gain new members, so this
is never likely to happen.
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MySpace Discussion Groups |
 One of the major activities members can participate in are Discussion Groups.
There are a variety of fun and interesting Groups such as sports, music, cars, etc.,
but there are also some very questionable Groups as well. Groups such as "Transexual
Lovers" and "Montana Organized Crime" (devoted to Tony Montana the crime boss hero
in Scarface) are not what I would call wholesome or family friendly. The language
in many of these Groups is often X-Rated and rebellious.
Although MySpace membership is needed to join these groups, view uploaded photos
and participate in the discussion, it is not required to view what others are discussing.
What's more, even if your child is a member of one of these Groups, it can be virtually
impossible to find out. The search functions currently available on MySpace do not
allow you to see who is active in which groups.
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You might be surprised! |
Parents who track MySpace and other online activity
that their kids are involved in, are often surprised to see exactly where they've
been! Most kids are pretty good, but they are always curious. Many times
the trouble they get into is because they don't know when to NOT follow a link!
Unfortunately, the only real way parents can have peace of mind is by monitoring
their kids internet activity. Whether or not your children avoid the
dangers of MySpace, is something you can only know for sure by seeing where
they've been.
Visit our MySpace Safety page to learn about the
ideas and tools available to you that can really be effective in the protection
of your children.
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PC Magazine 2007 Editor's Choice Award
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National Sex Offender Registry
The Federal Government has consolidated participating state Web site public information
regarding the presence or location of sex offenders in your area. Use this
website to identify and search for predators on MySpace
in your area.
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Tennessee Teacher Back in Jail After MySpace Incident
A 28 year-old female Tennessee teacher, who was originally arrested for having sex with a 13 year-old student, was put back in jail for a parole violation. Apparently she tried to make contact with her victim, through his sister on MySpace.
See the Complete Story about the MySpace Teacher at Fox News.
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Monitor Family Internet Activity
IamBigBrother
Captures everything from chats and instant messages to email, web sites and much more.
PC Tattletale
Easy to install and setup, records any and all software programs run, web sites visited and does not interfere with normal browsing.
Filter Out Dangerous Content
ContentProtect
Powerful, yet simple to install filtering and monitoring solution.
See why we recommend these tools for parents in the MySpace
Safety area!
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