May 19, 2007 By Jennifer Harr 4 min read

Eight states, including Pennsylvania, banded together Friday in an effort to force the free Internet community MySpace to preserve records of users who are registered sex offenders and provide that information to authorities. The online site, www.myspace.com, allows users to create profiles, share photographs and communicate with other users, as long as they are at least 14.

But state Attorney General Tom Corbett said during a luncheon Wednesday at the state police barracks in Uniontown that MySpace has no age verification process for its users, making it easy for young children to sign up for pages.

At the time, Corbett said that MySpace could be like a “shopping mall” for sexual predators.

Trooper Donald S. Lucas of the state police Computer Crimes Unit said Friday that locally, authorities are not currently seeing cases of sex offenders using MySpace to look for potential victims. But, said Lucas, six or eight months ago, police weren’t seeing any MySpace-related crimes at all.

Now, police are seeing instances of harassment, he said.

“A lot of kids are opening profiles in other kids’ names, putting racial things or sexual things on it, to get back at people they don’t like,” Lucas said.

Depending on what someone posts, he said it may or may not be a criminal offense.

In one case, a user opened a profile under someone else’s name, Lucas said. When MySpace successfully shut down that profile, the user opened another, and another when that profile was pulled down.

In that case, police were able to file a misdemeanor harassment charge.

Or, in a case where someone posts something racially charged under someone else’s name, Lucas said it’s conceivable that the person who posted that information has put the other person in danger from the targeted racial group.

Complicating everything is that MySpace does not make it easy to have a profile deleted, he said.

MySpace’s policy, listed under the frequently asked questions at the bottom of the homepage, asks someone who believes that they are being impersonated to send a “salute” to the site.

A “salute” is a picture of the impersonated person holding a handwritten sign with MySpace.com written on it, as well as other information about the profile.

If the fake profile “is an extremely obvious attempt to be cruel/false, you may not need to send a salute,” according to the site.

Earlier this month, police charged Kevin Andrew Burd, 19, of Uniontown with terroristic threats, identity theft, recklessly endangering another person, harassment and disorderly conduct, following a two-week investigation.

Trooper Thomas Broadwater alleged Burd used MySpace to create a racially charged Web page purported to be authored by a 16-year-old Uniontown Area High School student.

Recently, police have also investigated a case that involved a juvenile who supposedly posted an inappropriate photo of another juvenile on a MySpace page, pretending to be that person.

Corbett indicated that MySpace had pulled down profiles from “a few thousand” convicted sex offenders. Corbett said in a press release that the eight attorneys general involved in the action want that information preserved.

“Simply blocking or removing sex offenders’ pages on MySpace without making any effort to forward that information to law enforcement or warn other users does little to enhance public safety,” Corbett said.

Fayette County Assistant District Attorney Jack R. Heneks Jr., who prosecutes child abuse crimes, explained that there have been no cases filed in the county related to sexual predators inappropriately using the online community.

“There’s definitely a possibility of abuse, but it’s also a useful device for teens to legitimately communicate,” Heneks said.

The Megan’s Law Web site, compiled by the state police lists 146 registered sex offenders living within the county, 61 of whom are in either the county or state prison.

However, Lucas said he does not find it difficult to believe that sex offenders could start using the site for nefarious purposes.

But both Lucas and Heneks said that sex offenders are all over the Internet and parents need to be aware of what their children are doing online.

“You have to be wary of the threat, especially to teen-agers,” Heneks said.

“The computer isn’t a parent. You have to be aware of what your child is doing and you have to realize that your kids are probably more Internet savvy than you are,” he further said.

Regarding what children are doing on the computer behind parents’ backs, he said, “You probably don’t know about them because they’re better at hiding it.”

“The bottom line is this: You can’t let your kid have unrestricted Internet access in his room, where he goes from 4 p.m. until midnight,” Lucas said. “There are no limits to the trouble he could get himself into.”