Saturday, January 20, 2007

MySpace Spyware?

In response to harsh criticism that MySpace doesn't do enough to protect its under-18 users from sexual predators, the networking site is developing its own brand of "spyware for parents." According to the BBC website,
"The project, codenamed Zephyr, would alert parents to the name, age and location details entered by
the youngster on the profile of his or her homepage. Even if they tried to change these from another
computer, the home PC would be alerted."
"But," the article notes, "the programme would do nothing to prevent adults posing as teenagers, or stop children running an entirely separate profile from outside the home."

Now, I don't use MySpace...and I understand the desire to shift the burden of responsibility for underage users from the networking site to the parents...but if this software is easy enough for a technology-illiterate parent (such as one unable to create their own MySpace page and check out their kids'...) to use, doesn't that open up a whole new world of danger for the privacy of other MySpace users? As the title of the BBC article so forebodingly asks, "is the MySpace net closing in?"

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