I agree with Maven.

If I open a coffee shop, I cant be responsible for the type of people who meet up to go for coffe, you know? Or for example I cant tell an older man and a young girl to not have coffee in my shop , for all I know they are father and daughter. I can take some obvious steps to make it known that people should be careful, but ultimately it is the job of the parent to educate their children about child predators and dangerous situations.

This is the same as ANY online community. The same thing could happen ANY where. I am sure it used to happen on the old IRC channels( I know it did, i received a few passes myself, but I knew better than to give them info or anything). The problem is, when you have a website like myspace, there is no way to know who is lying and who is not short of having everyone fax in id or meet in person. Same for yahoo, same for msn, same for any of the big websites that get used. These predators use alot more than just myspace, its just that myspace gets sensationalized because it is "emo" and also "cool". Its a fad, and it will pass with time. Other websites that have this problem include hotornot, facethejury, any of the dating sites(such as lavalife) msn spaces, hi 5, tagworld, there are many, many many places.

If anything I think that myspace should be running a warning or at least a faq on their site explaining the possible dangers, and information on how to keep safe.

I dont think that we should blame Myspace for the activities of its so-many-thousands of users. It simply is not fair. It would be the same as if someone did something to hurt someone else on here, and then we blamed PC saying it was horrible for allowing these things IMO.

I also beleive we need to take greater responsibility for the types of activities we engage in online. Though the things that happen can be scary, there are precautions we can take such as not disclosing personal trackable information, not giving our website out to others we do not know or trust,putting netnannys on the computer to block out websites, sitting with our children and explaining if potentially harmful websites come up, education education education!

There ARE good meetings via the internet as well. When I was a girl, I chose to meet someone I had talked to online for a long long time. It was another girl my age. My parents called her parents and spoke with them, and everyone made arrangements to meet at a local fair! We all had a great time, my parents met her parents, it was public and safe, and the girl and I stayed pen pals for a very long time. it can work out and be ok, but only if you understand it for what it is and take precautions.