MySpace Hires Safety Czar
MySpace is making more moves to improve online safety for its young members, including hiring a huge staff to monitor member profiles for safety, and have also hired Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam, now director of Consumer Security Outreach & Child Safe Computing at Microsoft Corp.
The media frenzy around MySpace.com has struck a nerve with parents fretting about what their kids are doing online.
Now the social networking site, along with other Net companies and child advocate groups, is trying to calm those parents about what their kids are doing online and what tools they have to deal with it.
On Tuesday, MySpace and other Fox-owned interactive media properties are expected to announce the hiring of a chief security officer, Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam, a former Justice Department prosecutor who specialized in child exploitation cases. He will handle all education, safety, privacy and law enforcement programs for MySpace and other Fox properties.
MySpace has also hired more employees to handle security and customer care–roughly 100 people, or one-third of its workforce, scout out inappropriate content or underage members.
“Lots and lots of parents want their kids’ profiles down,” said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, a nonprofit organization that provides safety and health information. Aftab has worked for years with MySpace and other social networks to design safety guidelines. “But we all need to take a breath and fashion solutions to address the real problem, which is how much information kids are putting online and who are they communicating with online.”
On Monday, MySpace teamed up with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Advertising Council, the people responsible for the Smokey Bear ads, to introduce a new ad campaign targeted toward teens online.
The print, television and interactive ads encourage kids not to “believe the type,” in one example, urging them to be more critical when it comes to talking to strangers online and reading material online.
If this is true and MySpace gets serious about safety, it will ultimately only improve the experience of MySpace. But make no mistake: Big brother is now watching everything that happens on myspace. Technological solutions can be used to profile online stalkers, and provide investigators with the right tools needed to help solve crimes that involve MySpace users.
In addition, there is a real potential to use the partnership with NCMEC to get information about missing children to one of the largest groups of people on the Internet. Could you imagine the impact that an Amber Alert would have if it suddenly became everyone’s ad banner at the top of their myspace page? NCMEC also works closely with America’s Most Wanted, which is aired on Fox Networks, and Fox’s Newscorp is now the owner of Myspace. Hopefully they will use the resources at hand to do some real good for exploited children.
And the creeps and predators of MySpace will have to go somewhere else to prey on kids. Or maybe not. Its up to MySpace at this point.
A nod goes to Trench at MyCrimeSpace for the news tip.
