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90,000 Sex Offenders on its Site, Says MySpace

"Today's news from MySpace casts doubt on parts of a recent report by a Task Force charged with finding and developing technologies to make social networks safer."

"Today's news from MySpace casts doubt on parts of a recent report by a Task Force charged with finding and developing technologies to make social networks safer." -- North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said today that MySpace revealed that it has found approximately 90,000 registered sex offenders on its social networking Web site. That total includes 40,000 more offenders than the company previously acknowledged it had found on its site.

"Today's news from MySpace casts doubt on parts of a recent report by a Task Force charged with finding and developing technologies to make social networks safer," said Cooper in a release. Cooper, Blumenthal and other attorneys general criticized the report for using outdated research that predates the emergence of social networking sites and for minimizing law enforcement reports that child predators are using these sites to find their victims.

For more than three years, Cooper and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal have led a group of attorneys general who are pushing to make social networks safer, winning landmark national agreements with MySpace and Facebook in 2008.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott -- who said he did not join the Task Force report -- said the report and media stories based on it mislead parents to ignore some of the real dangers on social networking sites.

Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.