The internet is a common medium for sexual crime between strangers. The problem is acute on massively popular social networking platforms like MySpace because profiles and messaging platforms make targeting and communication easy. The easy mingling of adults and minors also opens the door to age-related sexual crime. You could say MySpace is the new AOL of jailbait crime. It seems that every week brings another prosecution of an adult for sex with a minor. This week 21 year old Dustin Watson was charged in Chesapeake, VA for having sex with a 15 year old he met on MySpace.

IMSafer, the AOL, Yahoo or MSN Messenger chat monitoring service that alerts parents to inappropriate conversation on their computers, has now extended their safety technology to MySpace. The first release will alert parents to inappropriate comments left by others on their children's profiles. Later revisions will extend the protection umbrella to site mail, blogs, picture comments and bulletins. Parents can avail themselves of the service by subscribing to IMSafer Plus.

The service works by having the parent download and install a program on the computers at home. Presumably the program monitors traffic between the browser and the MySpace servers, filtering for the categories of inappropriate communication specified by the parent. Flagged material is logged and an alert is emailed to the parent.

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