Women mistakenly ID’d as sex offender by MySpace
MySpace Reportedly Labels Innocent Woman as Sex Offender:
We have our first victim of the Great MySpace Sex Offender Purge of Aught-Seven.
Jessica Davis, a 29-year-old University of Colorado senior, found herself falsely branded a sex offender and kicked off MySpace last weekend, ABC News reports. There is no registered sex offender by her name in Colorado. But when Davis availed herself of MySpace’s appeals process, the results were less than satisfactory
“I want to inform you that I am NOT a sex offender, let me repeat my self (sic), I am NOT a sex offender. You have the wrong person and I’m horrified and appalled at such an accusation,” wrote Davis, an English major who lives outside of Boulder and hopes to attend law school. “I would like to know where you got this information and would like this matter cleared up ASAP.”
On Wednesday, days after she sent a second e-mail to MySpace, Davis said she finally heard back.
“We do not keep records of removed profiles or images,” the response note reads. “If it was removed by MySpace it was because of a violation of our terms and conditions — which can include a number of things (underage, inappropriate images, cyber bullying, spam, etc). Please review our terms for further assistance.”
If MySpace is labeling people incorrectly as sex offenders it makes me wonder how many sex offenders they may have labeled as people.
Tags: MySpace, purge, sex-offendersRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Predators
5 opinions for Women mistakenly ID’d as sex offender by MySpace
katie
May 25, 2007 at 11:05 am
trench, you bring up an excellent point. how are they going to determine who’s an offender and who’s not? Is it based on their name and birthday? It would not be hard for someone to create a profile with false information, as anyone who reads this or The Dead Kids of Myspace would know. I feel bad for this girl and everyone else that is falsely labeled a sex offender.
Shoot, even sex offenders don’t want to be labeled as one, how would an innocent person feel?
I’m all for getting rid of these pedophiles, but how are they going to do this without making a persons attempts at creating a myspace profile nearly impossible to do without a lawyer, and signed notorized documents varifying a persons identity?
It was a good idea, not all that well thought out, and it will not solve the problem.
David
May 25, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Katie, not every sex offender is a pedophile. Trench…sex offender’s are people too…despite your comment.
Some of them even work very very hard to fix their mistakes and re-integrate into society and work for the common good of all. It isn’t fair to lump them all into one catagory and insinuate that they aren’t human beings.
That said, there are some that are animals. There are SOs that DON’T want to get better, that are happy to inflict missery on society. I think these are the ones Trench is referring to. It is unfair to lump them all together
BelchSpeak
May 25, 2007 at 1:58 pm
One of the things that havent been covered is HOW Myspace is using the sex offender databases and Sentinel software to identify known sex offenders, especially given the following:
1. Most Myspace users do not use their real names
2. MySpace users are difficult to identify by email addresses
3. Email addresses and internet handles are not reported to sex offender databases
So how does sentinel do it? Facial recognition software, most likely. Correlated with IP addresses, zipcode information and state names.
Most people post pictures of themselves on myspace, either on the main page or under the pictures section. The Sentinel software most likely saw Jessica Davis posing with a sex offender. She may not have known he was a sex offender, but that’s how she likely got the boot.
katie
May 25, 2007 at 7:19 pm
David you are right, but I was really focusing on pedophiles, because I feel that they are the worst predator on myspace.
I do understand that not all sex offenders are pedophiles. And I do know that some people do reform themselves. But where do we draw the line? How do we pick and choose who’s dangerous and who’s not?
David
May 27, 2007 at 9:55 pm
We let the DA’s and the Judges who sentence the criminals decide rather than leaving it up to myspace, who has no idea about the individual cases. They routinely put post-release conditions on criminals, there’s no reason to believe that judges would allow a convicted SO who has a history of internet based crime or crimes against children would allow that SO to use myspace. Any DA would/should be pushing for restrictions on such social networking sites. This is a far better way to assure that only the dangerous offenders are being punished.
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