We've nixed a quarter-million underage users, MySpace says
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
The social networking Web site MySpace.com has canceled the accounts of 250,000 underage users since it was founded three years ago in the hopes of stopping incidents like the one in which a 13-year-old Jersey City girl was fondled by a 20-year-old after meeting his roommate on the site, a spokesman said yesterday.
MySpace rules forbid anyone under the age of 14 from holding an account, but Jersey City police say the 13-year-old used the site and met the roommate of Sebastian Osorio, 20, of Kamena Street in Fairview.
Osorio has been charged with having criminal sexual contact with the girl, who police say sent harrowing text messages to her mother after going missing March 6. The messages said the girl was being held captive in a basement and being forced to do "disgusting" things, officials said.
The girl was found a few days later in Times Square in New York City unharmed, officials said. Police said afterward that it appeared the girl left home with a change of clothes and took a bus to meet Osorio and had consensual sexual contact with him but that it was still illegal because of her age.
The MySpace spokesman, Matthew Grossman, said the company uses a three-pronged attack to keep underage users off the site, including education, technology and a customer care department made up of more than a third of the company's employees.
"It is an effort to prevent the kind of thing that happened in New Jersey," said Grossman. "Clearly, the majority of users have a great experience on the site. The vast majority of 67 million people have entirely safe experiences on the Internet."
The company was founded in 2003.
Grossman said the task of sorting out underage users is a tall order.
"Very often the kids know what's going on online more than the parents do, but these are not issues just isolated to MySpace," Grossman said.
MySpace has 67 million users and in February alone it had 37 million unique users logged in, said Grossman. During that month the site had 25 billion page visits, Grossman said.
But Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said there are inherent dangers when juveniles meet people on the Internet.
"This is troublesome and worrisome and sometimes can be dangerous," DeFazio said yesterday. "I think they certainly have to be even more vigilant, but there are limits on what we can expect from the operators of these sites. The adult family members must monitor the conduct of juveniles online."
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
The social networking Web site MySpace.com has canceled the accounts of 250,000 underage users since it was founded three years ago in the hopes of stopping incidents like the one in which a 13-year-old Jersey City girl was fondled by a 20-year-old after meeting his roommate on the site, a spokesman said yesterday.
MySpace rules forbid anyone under the age of 14 from holding an account, but Jersey City police say the 13-year-old used the site and met the roommate of Sebastian Osorio, 20, of Kamena Street in Fairview.
Osorio has been charged with having criminal sexual contact with the girl, who police say sent harrowing text messages to her mother after going missing March 6. The messages said the girl was being held captive in a basement and being forced to do "disgusting" things, officials said.
The girl was found a few days later in Times Square in New York City unharmed, officials said. Police said afterward that it appeared the girl left home with a change of clothes and took a bus to meet Osorio and had consensual sexual contact with him but that it was still illegal because of her age.
The MySpace spokesman, Matthew Grossman, said the company uses a three-pronged attack to keep underage users off the site, including education, technology and a customer care department made up of more than a third of the company's employees.
"It is an effort to prevent the kind of thing that happened in New Jersey," said Grossman. "Clearly, the majority of users have a great experience on the site. The vast majority of 67 million people have entirely safe experiences on the Internet."
The company was founded in 2003.
Grossman said the task of sorting out underage users is a tall order.
"Very often the kids know what's going on online more than the parents do, but these are not issues just isolated to MySpace," Grossman said.
MySpace has 67 million users and in February alone it had 37 million unique users logged in, said Grossman. During that month the site had 25 billion page visits, Grossman said.
But Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said there are inherent dangers when juveniles meet people on the Internet.
"This is troublesome and worrisome and sometimes can be dangerous," DeFazio said yesterday. "I think they certainly have to be even more vigilant, but there are limits on what we can expect from the operators of these sites. The adult family members must monitor the conduct of juveniles online."
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