NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Social-networking Web sites Facebook and MySpace have identified and disabled accounts used by more than 3,500 registered sex offenders in New York State using a law passed last year that requires sex offenders to register their emails and online aliases with the state, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.
At a press conference, Cuomo said Facebook has disabled accounts held by 2,782 registered sex offenders and News Corp.’s MySpace has disabled accounts linked to 1,796 registered sex offenders. Some of the sex offenders were on both Web sites.
Cuomo said many of the offenders were violating their parole by being on social-networking sites and are prohibited from interacting with young people.
“Whether it’s a playground on the street corner or a playground in cyberspace, it doesn’t matter,” Cuomo said.
Under the state’s Electronic Securing and Targeting of Online Predators Act passed last year, registered sex offenders are required to register their emails and other online identifiers with the state.
The law sets mandatory restrictions on a sex offender’s access to the Internet where the offender’s victim was a minor, the Internet was used to commit the offense or they are among the highest-level offenders.
Cuomo said Facebook and MySpace are the online social-networking sites who have sought access to the information compiled under the e-Stop law.
His office is sending letters to 17 other social-networking sites encouraging them to take advantage of the data gathered under the law, including classmates.com and Friendster, Cuomo said.
Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s assistant general counsel, said the Web site voluntarily adopted a policy to not allow registered sex offenders on the site. He called New York’s law the model for other states and the nation.
In a statement, MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam said, “We applaud and support Attorney General Cuomo’s leadership in his ground breaking use of e-STOP to make the Internet a safer place. MySpace utilized e-STOP to complement technology we had already put in place to remove registered sex offenders from our community as part of a comprehensive approach to protecting Internet users from predators.”
MySpace and Facebook agreed in 2007 to adopt new procedures to protect children from sexual predators.
