Thousands of convicted sex offenders have registered for profiles on social networking Web site MySpace, posing a risk to children who are among the site's most avid users, eight US attorneys general said on Monday.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and counterparts in seven states called on the company, owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, to hand over the offenders' names and addresses.
Sources told the attorneys general that MySpace had discovered thousands of sex offenders on its site in an internal investigation, Blumenthal said. He did not give the identity of the sources.
"Our objective is to assure that these convicted sex offenders are removed from this site and other social networking sites," Blumenthal said by telephone after holding a news conference in Hartford, Connecticut.
"The information about convicted sex offenders on MySpace is simply more evidence that additional measures such as age verification are necessary to protect children," he said.
About 100 million people worldwide use the fast-growing MySpace service.
Children's advocates say they fear that young teens who use MySpace, Facebook and other such sites to socialize fail to grasp the risks involved in meeting people over the Internet.
"People should be notified if these offenders have been in touch with them or their children," said Judi Westberg-Warren, president of Web Wise Kids, a California-based nonprofit Internet safety organization.
The attorneys general also asked that MySpace describe the steps it has taken to warn users about sex offenders and remove their profiles. They asked the Web site to respond to their requests by May 29.
"They are by far the largest social networking site," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said. "They certainly should be the standard bearer for changes that need to be made."
"That combination of sex offenders and children is a recipe for tragedy," Blumenthal said.
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