Just about few hours ago, Myspace.com released a new plan on age restriction. Prior to the 14 year old sue myspace.com for 30 million dollar thing, the site prohibits anyone from 13 or under to have a myspace web page. The new plan is "MySpace users who are 18 or over could no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old's friends' list unless they already know either the youth's e-mail address or full name."(AP) Bascially, I can't request my friend who is 15 years old age unless I know her email address or her real name.
My question to Tom and News Corp. who bought myspace.com for 580 Million dollars, what make you think this new restriction plan is going to work?
For me, I don't think it's going to work. Anybody including myself can sign up on myspace.com and lie about my age. Remember, myspace.com is free. Anyone can have a myspace. What is the best way to crack down a pedophile from messing around with your kids?
The only thing I can come up is to make it private like one of those online dating site like match.com and eharmony.com. Bascially, subscribers have to pay to have a myspace. This way, it cracks down huge number of adults with bad intention from having one. So far, I have not heard any subscriber from eharmony or any sites that required fee for membership to have problems with any kind of sexual assult/ online pedophile. Maybe myspace needs to do something like this. However, it's all about money. If myspace decided to do what I suggested above, I'm pretty sure that everybody is going to stop using myspace and use something else that similar to it.
The point is this, the myspace restriction plan is not going to work. Anybody can lie about anything about him/herself on a social networking site. Anyone can ask my 14-15 year old friendsto give me their name and email address. Plus, who here uses myspace.com and lie about their age? just about everybody I know. So..I don't know...It's not going to work anyways..Tom, why bother come up with it?
Well, if they're lying about their age, then their parents aren't doing their jobs right - that's not exactly myspaces' fault. And they cannot begin marketing and running themselves as eHarmony or Match.com because they aren't a dating service.
What they should do is a) remove the checkbox under "Here for" that selects "Dating" - if people want to meet someone over the web, they can go to eHarmony or Match.com. Plus, removing themselves from that market they should be able to build on their own "personality" (right now they don't have one, they're just doing a little bit of everything).
And b) there are some sites that check the existence of your credit / debit card as proof of age. This costs nothing; you enter your credit card information as you sign up for a free service - they run it for $1 to check it's valid and in your name (since you have to be 18 to have a checking account, that prooves your age) and then refund the $1 and delete your credit information. It's not stored anywhere, despite being on a secure server, so there's no fear of the information being let go of. For the time being, this would get rid of about 75%-80% of the riffraff until someone is able to develop a better way of proving age online.
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"Dream as though you'll live forever, but live as though there's no tomorrow" --James Dean
http://www.progressiveu.org/user/fanaile-drupal-org
Yea I know what you mean.. Myspace is getting gay and I am trying to find sites just like it already. I have not found any good sites just like it yet so if you find one before me hit me up and tell me.. I really want to find it before large numbers of people start messin it up like myspace.. Thanks.. for the update anyway..
You do not have to be 18 to have a checking account or a debit card that acts like a credit card (you can buy stuff from retailers that accept credit cards but the money comes from your account). I know this because I have both.
I do not think that MySpace will become a pay site, unless they are trying to reduce the number of users using it. As at least one person has said, people will just move to other providers, such as FaceBook and Xanga. In addition, some kids will just use their parent's credit card because some parents are not really good at keeping track of things like this. And of course, a pedophile could provide a credit card and myspace account for them thru email (which I got when I was about 9 or 10).....
If people want to be stupid, they will be stupid until they get smart.
Well, perhaps that is a local law, or perhaps just company policies, but I know that here you have to be 18 before a bank will open up a checking account in your name, and the savings accounts they offer those people under the age of 18 do not come with the Visa/Mastercard debit cards.
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"Dream as though you'll live forever, but live as though there's no tomorrow" --James Dean
http://www.progressiveu.org/user/fanaile-drupal-org
Actually, you have to have a parent's name on the account, but after they sign the papers, you can do whatever without them finding out (unless they make it a habit to check on your accounts).
Savings accounts (at least in my area) do not usually come with check cards (debit card that looks like a credit card), they usually only come with checking accounts.
Oh, well then if they were to use that check card as verification of your age, it wouldn't work because the account's not in your name - your name is only attached to it. I'm not talking about using the check cards to buy something - which would obviously go through - but using them to verify who you are and your age. If the card/account isn't in your name - and the billing address is not the same as your mailing address - it wouldn't go through when trying to prove your age.
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"Dream as though you'll live forever, but live as though there's no tomorrow" --James Dean
http://www.progressiveu.org/user/fanaile-drupal-org
The account is in both names, usually with the kid's name first and the parent's name second and the billing address would be the same as the mailing address.
Every system is prone to vulnerabilities one way or the other. This new restriction on MySpace is no exception. There is no such thing as 100% secure and there never will be. The possibility of failure always exists when it comes to security.
That is the same here. You have to be 18 to do anything. They dont even let parents co sign for younger kids to get checking accounts. You can only get a savings that way and your parent has to be with you or you cant withdrawl any money.
It may work, who knows? I'm glad there is a way for older kids to still be friends with younger ones though. I am 18 but I have friends from school who are 16 and 17.
quit being stupid, myspace is just trying to not get sued, whether or not it works, they can claim they had safeguards in place and it was the childs own fault if they lied, and all this crap about making people pay or age verification? hello? the reason myspace makes money is because they DONT make people pay, which is why they now have 90 million users and all these ad agencies are paying cash to get their adverts on there or build their own special myspace,
and age verification? to prove that youre 18? why are you trying to prove that people are 18 when it says you can be 14 or older to join? if youre gonna make a point that you should only be 18 or older to join maybe you shouldve said it idiot.
and i doubt anybody from eharmony or match.com has troubles with pedophiles contacting them, not because its a pay service but maybe because match.com doesnt exactly have the young members a pedophile would be looking for? duh.
and a quick note btw, youre forgetting all the other saftey features myspace now has in place, EVERYBODY now has the option of making their profile private, so only friends can see them, AND everybody has the option of allowing only people with their email or full name to add them, sure people can meesage you still, its whether or not your kid is stupid enough to pay attention to it, and even if they did somehow get on your friends list, whats the worst they could do that they couldnt do if they werent on it? leave you a comment? put you on their top 8? yeah its not like you could delete them off your friends list or delete their comments...oh wait, you can.
i read this article yesterday that made these valid points
Let me start with just a couple of statements:
1) MySpace is a tool - it is not good, bad or ugly, it just is.
2) Communication tools don’t assult children - sadly children have probably been at risk from predators since before someone thought to make some scratches on a rock to leave a message
3) The future is coming - I’m sorry, time seems to be stuck in play and I can’t find batteries powerful enough for the remote control big enough to pause the future for us to catch our breaths for a second. We just have to carry on as best we can…
All people do is lie about their age and say they're 18. You're right, it's NOT going to to work. Myspace is stupid.
Oh myspace always creates alot of drama