Myspace to offer parental notification software

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/01/17/myspace_to_offer_parental_notification_software_report/

Myspace is an online "community" in which people can meet new people, share pictures, interests and even catch up with old friends. Although the idea of this website is harmless and offers a chance to build community effortlessly, it is just as easy for sexual predators and child abusers to gain access to these communities and take advantage of young users. In response to this threat, a company called "Zephyr" is going to create software that allows parents to view only the name, age and location that their children are using to log into myspace. Parents can not gain access personal information, emails or anything of that sort, they can only monitor the way and from what location their child is presenting themselves from. I strongly believe that allowing parents this ability to access this trivial information could greatly improve a parent’s ability to control their child’s actions on Myspace. The current age requirement of Myspace is 14, and if parents can see that their child, who is underage has a Myspace account, they have grounds to prevent their child from using the account. In addition, if a young user says that they are over the age of 18 they are putting themselves in a position to interact with older users and even perhaps become a victim of sex offenders. By allowing parents to view the age that their child uses on Myspace gives them the ability to further protect their children from online predators. Although there are "33 state attorneys general considers whether to take action against MySpace if it does not raise the age limit to join the site to 16 from 14 and begin verifying members' ages", there are other ways to keep children safe. During decision process regarding if parents are allowed to access their child’s limited profile, they could prevent any other young users from becoming victims of sex offenders. Although a parent viewing their child’s limited profile does not prevent these teenagers from over exposing themselves and giving out too much information, it is a step in the right direction. The users will be alerted of their status being checked, and with the threat of parents watching their actions, many youngsters may be less tempted to falsify information in their profile. Parents possessing this ability to obtain information does not violate the privacy of the users, because this type of information can be obtained by any other users, it is just made easier for the parents, as to save them the time to search around and find their child. However an important question is raised that if others will be able to use this system to also track underage users. As much as I am in favor of parents using this system to help protect their children from becoming online targets, it should not be used until all the kinks are worked out and it can be guaranteed that sex offenders or users looking to get the information of children cannot access that type of information. It is not the responsibility of Myspace to keep children off their site who are giving fraudulent information, however with the help of "Zephyr" parents can prevent their children from falling victim to sexual predators in the Myspace community.