We met with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper back in September at a Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club. We were presenting him with an award on behalf of his work to protect children online. At the time, he discussed with us his plans to work with all the US State's Attorneys General to get MySpace and other Social Networking sites to do more to protect our children online.
Today's news announcement shows us just what he and his colleagues have accomplished. www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/01/14/myspace.agreement.ap/index.html
In a nutshell: MySpace will, by default, do more to protect our younger children online. They will actively block known sexual predators from the site. And they will aggressively work in partnership with law enforcement to keep the site safe for our children. Well done MySpace!!
And for parents - if you want to block your children from setting up accounts on MySpace, you can write them a letter with a list of email addresses and they will help you prevent them. It's not a perfect system with new free email addresses so readily available or the ways creative kids find to get around new restrictions but it's a help, one that any parent should welcome!