Whose are you?

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - MySpace is yielding to demands by US state justice officials that it expose sexual predators that may be prowling the youth-oriented social networking website.

The move ends a standoff between MySpace and top prosecutors from eight US states that had demanded the identities of convicted sex criminals who have posted their profiles on the News Corporation-owned website.

State attorneys general subpoenaed MySpace after the website refused to hand over the data on the grounds that disclosure of the private information was barred by US law.

"Our subpoena compels this information right away -- within hours not weeks, without delay -- because it is vital to protecting children," said Connecticut state attorney general Richard Blumenthal.

"MySpace has decided to do the right thing, but additional steps are necessary, such as age verification, to protect children from predators on social networking sites."

MySpace told AFP that since innovative "Sentinel SAFE" software began running "24 hours a day" on the website May 2, 2007 it has ferreted out about 7,000 profiles posted by convicted sex criminals.

MySpace deleted the profiles but saved information about them for law enforcement officials, said MySpace chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam.

"We've always intended to provide law enforcement with the information," said Nigam, a former US prosecutor who handled sex crimes.

"The last week has been about the mechanism to provide the information in a way so that someone charged by law enforcement doesn't get off because of a technicality."

US law bans illegally obtained evidence from being used in court.

Nigam said that since MySpace received the letter from US attorneys general last week he has been collaborating with them to make certain they use proper legal channels to get the data.

"At the end of the day, it is all about implementing a process that lets the information be used in court," Nigam told AFP. "We work with law enforcement every day. We have a very well-oiled law enforcement compliant program."

North Carolina state attorney general Roy Cooper laments that the data from MySpace does not include sexual predators without convictions, using fake names, or not registered with police.

"We are pleased to see MySpace step up to the plate and provide us with the very important information," Cooper said. "But, we still must do more to protect our children from predators."

MySpace is lobbying for a federal law requiring convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses to make it easier to screen them from membership websites used by young people.

US law already requires people convicted of sex crimes to register their addresses with local police after they are released from custody.

Sex offenders may have violated their parole or probation by contacting or soliciting children on MySpace, Blumenthal said.

There are an approximately 600,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. Nearly 180 million profiles are posted on MySpace.

"What you are really seeing is a mirror of a physical community appearing online," Nigam said of MySpace.

"It is a reflection of society, which is why we have to implement all the safety features and education we can."

MySpace and Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. created Sentinel Safe, touted as the nation's "first proprietary software dedicated to identifying and removing sexual predators from online communities."

The justice chiefs of Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and New Hampshire had contacted MySpace after getting word that it had found thousands of convicted sex offenders with profile web pages.