Still Too Many Sex Offenders Using Myspace and Facebook: General Public Needs to Do It's Part Too

I recently turned in a name to Facebook of a convicted sex offender who was using the social networking site and got a message back that they had dealt with the problem.

I happened upon him accidentally as I was looking at a friend's profile and saw that this guy, who spent five years in jail for sexual assault and was a classmate of mine from college, had established a profile.

I also know both of his victims--both 13 year olds at the time who would have been horrified to see him up on Facebook and communicating with other teen girls. I had no problem getting him thrown off of Facebook--I sent a link to his registry entry in my state's sex offender registry to Facebook and they put two and two together themselves.

I'm no crusader to get people thrown off any social networking sites.

But sex offenders are not supposed to be on social networking sites, yet there are tens of thousands of them using Facebook and Myspace, even risking going back to jail in some states.

Myspace has banned 90,000 convicted sex offenders from using their web site. Facebook hasn't released any information yet on how many they've barred. I know that they've barred one.

The general public needs to be aware that if they find someone that they know who are convicted sex offenders on a site like the two social sites discussed already, to contact those web sites and let them determine if the person involved falls under their guidelines, as forty-nine attorneys general have insisted that they do.

They're breaking the law by doing what they're doing and risking going back to jail. That isn't the sign of someone who is complying with the law and squaring their debt to society. If they were, they'd give Facebook and Myspace a WIDE berth and follow the instructions of their supervisors completely, no matter how unjustly they feel they're being treated.

Parents Need to Monitor the Myspace Profiles of their Kids: They Put Phone Numbers, Addresses and Other Information in Plain Site for All to See

Myspace needs to do more to protect kids from themselves, and parents need to WATCH WATCH WATCH what their kids are putting up there.

I think Myspace should set the profiles of anyone under the age of 16 to "private" for starters. If a profile is set to private, a user has to have the profile owner's permission to view all the information contained there. If it's set to public, anyone on the planet can see the information at will.

Parents need to know that kids put their phone numbers and whatever else on their profiles for all to see, including predators. Once someone has a phone number, they can get an address through the Internet. It can be done in moments.

The amount of personal contact information given away on some public profiles is astonishing. Kids are more vulnerable, and parents need to get a handle on this problem. And Myspace and other social networking sites need to help them do it.

People Must Use Caution on Social Networking Sites: Stuff Posted Can Come Back and Bite the User HARD

People do not understand how much damage they can do to their careers and reputations with postings and photos on such social networking sites as Myspace and FaceBook. Employers, universities and interviewers troll these sites, looking for what their current/prospective employees and students are posting, and how they are presenting themselves to the entire world.

As a general rule, if it looks or feels inappropriate to post to one of these kinds of sites, then it probably is. Profiles should be squeaky clean with the person's best foot forward. Scandalous postings and photos should be avoided at all costs. Some examples of people getting in trouble because of what they post:

• An education student at a university was denied a degree because the school administrators found pictures of her on her profile, which showed her partying. They felt the photo was unprofessional and gave her a degree in English but declined to give her the teaching certificate.
  
  
• A man was fired from his job as a school bus driver and a volunteer firefighter after he and his wife posted nude photos of him on Myspace.
  
  
• A Wal-Mart employee was fired for joking on his Myspace blog that he was going to bomb the store. He was subsequently denied unemployment because he made a threat. Duh!!
  
  
• A judge in Las Vegas was fired for his Myspace profile. He wrote that one of his interests was to "break his foot off in a prosecutor's ass" which made his impartiality during trials questionable.
  
  
• A sheriff's deputy in Florida(?) was fired for posting his bad habits on Myspace and his joking about putting people in jail.
  
  
• Another deputy was fired for posting racially and sexually inappropriate stuff on his Myspace profile.
  

There are hundreds of cases like the ones above.

People can put what they want on their profiles, but they only have themselves to blame if their photos and postings come around and bite them in the ass when they least expect it.

Use caution when using a social networking site.