In the past two years, 90,000 registered sex offenders have gotten the boot from MySpace, one of the top social networking sites.  That brings a sigh of relief for members of the Myspace community, but for Facebook members, don’t hold your breath.

Sentinel, a security technology firm which helps social network sites identify and block sexual predators, conducted investigations on both Myspace and Facebook.  Based on the numbers, they suspect that some of the exiled sex offenders have sought refuge in Facebook, and are managing to stay under its “weaker” radar.

In 2006, Myspace adopted Sentinel SAFE, a software program designed to identify, remove and block sex offenders.  The program searches social network sites using its database of more than 700,000 registered sex offenders (in the United States), comparing names, photos, birth date, emails and other personal data.  Facebook on the other hand, has its own resources for referencing official state sex offender registries. Yet Sentinel questions their current detection system after finding 8,487 of the booted 90,000 sex offenders on the site.

According to John Cardillo, the CEO of Sentinel, the number is merely the skin surface of the total number of offenders with accounts.  He estimates that there could be as many as 100,000 sex offenders and pedophiles on Facebook.

Despite the alarming number, according to Facebook’s chief privacy officer, the site is proactively monitoring the network and its users with various internal tools and a large team of professional investigators.  Facebook along with MySpace, exercise a zero tolerance policy, regularly disabling accounts of registered sex offenders.  Also, both sites have implemented certain precautionary measures such as prohibiting older users from searching for members under the age of 18.

Given Sentinel’s estimates of registered sex offenders on Facebook, the site’s screening technology could definitely use reworking.  Regardless of whether the screening systems are fail-safe or faulty, the unfortunate reality is that predators can always slip through the cracks.  So, the answer comes back to us and teaching our kids the importance of not interacting with strangers, as well as making full use of the available privacy settings.

Click here to see an easy to use guide on how to change your Facebook privacy settings.

Sources: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2201906.ece
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28999365

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