St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

A lot of people just don’t get it. The internet is and it’s billions of web sites are alot like being out in public. There are bad people out there. Would you let your 12 year old wander around in times square by themselves? Evidently a lot of parents would. They certainly let their kids wander around on the internet by themselves, without supervision.

What brings all this up? Well MySpace.com has just announced they’ve ripped of a version of someone elses software that allows them to find registered sex offenders with myspace profiles. Sounds good whuh? Well here’s why it’s actually pretty lame and a stupid idea to boot:

• It can only detect the sex offenders if they are using their real name and real address and that address is current with the sex offender registry.
• It lumps sex offenders in with sex predators. Don’t think there’s a difference? The difference is huge! Sex offenders are people that were convicted of crimes like peeing in public or buying a porno mag in a backwards county that prohibits them. Sexual Predators are people that have been convicted of things like raping children. Big difference, like I said.
• MySpace.com, which is owned by the same evil bastard that owns fox news is alluding that this program makes it safe for children to post their personal info and communicate with adults they don’t know. Well I’m sorry that just ever be the case. EVER.
• It does nothing to stop the collecting of information on people under 13 – a violation of federal law (shouldn’t it be 18, the age which one can enter a legal contract, which using a lot of web sites, including myspace.com requires?)

Well then what’s a good parent to do? It’s simple. Supervise your children, teach them good internet practices, and teach them internet realities such as it’s almost impossible to verify the identity of someone posting on the internet without a court order, or meeting that person, in person. A tactic I use with my kids, is to not let them have internet access in their bedrooms, but only in the common area of the house, where they won’t feel like they are in private.

What’s a good web publisher to do when planning a web design of a social networking or other user interactive site? That’s simple too. Don’t collect info on your users, and warn the ones that say they are under 18 repeatedly about the few dangers of the internet. And never imply you’ve verified the age and/or identity of web site users. It just can’t be done (no, not even with a credit card).

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