MySpace Tightens Security for Underage Users

I think this is a great step in the right direction. I think they could go farther and require a credit card from an adult so the Myspace accounts can be hard-tied to a known, confirmed user, but this is better than nothing.

World’s youngest blogger, Seth Hicks reacts to the new MySpace age restrictions.

From the AP here:

MySpace has reached an agreement with more than 45 states to change to help prevent sexual predators and others from misusing it.

Among other measures, MySpace agreed to:

• Allow parents to submit children’s e-mail addresses to MySpace to prevent anyone from misusing the addresses to set up profiles.
• Make the default setting “private” for 16- and 17-year-old users.
• Respond within 72 hours to complaints about inappropriate content and devote more staff and resources to classify photographs and discussion groups.
• Strengthen software to find underage users.
• Create a high school section for users under 18 years old.

MySpace also has to participate in an industry “working group” to help create a better way to verify age for social networking groups. I think MySpace agreed to these changes to stave off lawsuits from the States for negligence in that the software they created did not go far enough to protect underage users.