Wired News editor turns up 744 sex offenders on MySpace
Five months ago, Wired News senior editor and
former hacker Kevin Poulsen whipped up 1,000 lines of computer code that scoured
MySpace's 1 million plus profiles for 385,932 registered sex offenders in 46
states. In all, he was able to confirm 744 sex offenders with MySpace
profiles.
Serial sex offender Andrew Lubrano’s MySpace profile
Five months ago, Wired News senior editor and former hacker Kevin Poulsen whipped up 1,000 lines of computer code that scoured MySpace’s 1 million plus profiles for 385,932 registered sex offenders in 46 states.
The code turned up many false or unverifiable matches. Poulsen worked part-time for sevral months sifting the data and manually comparing photographs, ages and other data. In all, he was able to confirm 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles. Of those, 497 are registered for sex crimes against children. Of these, six are listed as repeat offenders.
MySpace told Poulsen that it would like to ban sex offenders from the site but is waiting for new laws that would make it easier for them to do so. The company is lobbying Congress for legislation that would require sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses with a central database.
Wired News will publish the code Poulsen used under an open-source license later this week.
I’m one of those geeks who still uses the word “hacker” — whether creative or destructive — regardless of what folks do with their abilities. It describes a skill set which has no intrinsic value judgement.
His detailed article at Wired is here.
Posted: Tue - October 17, 2006 at 05:36 AM