The Grand Forks School District has blocked the popular MySpace.com Web site on its computers, citing safety concerns and negative behavior nationwide linked to the site, including bullying and stalking.

“Outside of our schools, adults posing as youth have gained access to student chat rooms, which has led to tragedy in some cases,” said an April letter to parents signed by Ron Gruwell, assistant superintendent for secondary education, and Jody Thompson, assistant superintendent for elementary education, for the Grand Forks schools.

“Unsuspecting students have posted enough personal information that predators are able to locate their home or school address, thus becoming easy targets for predators.”

The Web site has become a favorite of child predators, cyber bullies and con artists, the letter said. Also, children, mostly ages 9 to 14, use the anonymity of the Web to post messages about others that would not be said face-to-face, the letter said. It went on to urge parents to talk to their children about MySpace, and to go to the site and register.

“Parents should be aware of what their children are writing and what others are posting on their Web sites,” the letter said.

NAPERVILLE, IL, United States (UPI) — Police in Naperville, Ill., arrested a man accused of soliciting sex with a 14-year-old girl on the Web site Myspace.com, the Chicago Tribune reported Sunday.

Jay Coffield, 44, of Morris, Ill. was arrested at a coffee shop in Naperville after relatives of the girl alerted police to the meeting, the newspaper said. Coffield was taken to the Will County Jail in Joliet, Ill. and charged with indecent solicitation of a child, a felony.

Police posed as the girl and had several online chats with Coffield before the meeting, the newspaper reported.

This arrest marks the second time in six weeks that Naperville Police`s Internet Crime Unit has used Myspace.com to arrest a suspect for alleged solicitation of a minor. John R. Wentworth, 27, was arrested May 9 in a similar case.

Billy Bragg has dramatically taken his music off his MySpace site after accusing the site of exploiting musicians by taking away their rights.

In a posting on his site he says media mogul and owner of MySpace Rupert Murdoch actually owns any music that is posted on the social networking site.

“Sorry there’s no music,” he posted “Once an artist posts up any content (including songs) it then belongs to MySpace (aka Rupert Murdoch) and they can do what they want with it, throughout the world, without paying the artist.”

According to the small print on the site by posting content an artists agrees to: “Hereby grant to Myspace.com a non-exclusive,fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the rights to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate ,publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit and distribute such content on and through the services.”

Myspace spokesperson Jeff Berman said: “Because the legalese has caused some confusion we are at work revising it to make it every clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist’s work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends. Obviously, we don’t own their music or do anything with it that they don’t want.”

Microsoft plans to give its MSN Spaces blog publishing and hosting service new social networking features, as well as support for the company’s lightweight applications called Gadgets.

The new social networking features are being tested by MSN Spaces users in Australia and the Netherlands, and are designed to foster user interaction, says Karin Muskopf, MSN product manager.

“We’ve heard from our customers they want to be able to see who their friends are talking to, because they feel those people would have similar interests to theirs. They want to be connected to people who are like-minded,” she says.

She declined to comment specifically about social networking competitors, but News’s MySpace has revolutionised this market with its eye-popping popularity. Beloved by teenagers and young adults, MySpace ranks second only to Yahoo in page views in the US, and drew almost 5% of all web site visits in March, ahead even of mighty Google, which drew little over 4%, according to Hitwise. MySpace currently has more than 73 million registered users worldwide, and adds about 250,000 new ones every day.

MySpace’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed by large providers of online services such as Microsoft, AOL, Google and Yahoo. Google has an invitation-only social network called Orkut and Yahoo has a blogging service called Yahoo 360. AOL recently launched AOL Pages, a social networking service tied to its AIM instant messaging service.

Ironically, MSN Spaces may also end up competing with Wallop, a startup that is developing a social networking service with technology Microsoft spun off from its research unit. Wallop plans to launch its service this year.

MSN Spaces, launched in December 2004, has always allowed users to link to other blogs on the network. But the plan now is to make this easier to do and more attractive, by letting users add a section to their blogs where they can build a gallery of “friends” who also have MSN Spaces blogs.

While this functionality is now limited to a simple hyperlink, entries in this new gallery will contain much more information about the friends, even including notes and tags the user can add about them. The social networking features will also be integrated with Microsoft’s instant message service.

The tests in Australia and the Netherlands have been going well and Microsoft plans to extend this functionality to users in other countries in the coming months, Muskopf says.

It makes sense for Microsoft to try to leverage the sizable MSN Spaces audience to go deeper into social networking. About 40 million people have set up MSN Spaces blogs, and the network receives about 120 million unique users per month, she says. Around 6 million photos are uploaded to the service each day for a total so far of about 2.5 billion.

Meanwhile, MSN Spaces will also gain support for Microsoft’s Gadgets, the lightweight applications introduced last year as a way to extend the functionality of larger desktop and web-based applications. Microsoft provides a website where developers can find information on how to build these mini-applications. Muskopf declined to provide details on how Gadgets will be supported within MSN Spaces.

Security teams have discovered a new instant messenger (IM)-based phishing attack aimed at stealing the account information of users of the popular social networking site MySpace.

The scam begins when AOL Instant Messenger users receive a hyperlink promising new photos from someone in their contact list. But clinking the link leads the victim to a bogus California-based website that spoofs the MySpace.com log-in page, according to a Websense Security Labs alert. The fraudulent site captures MySpace usernames and passwords, and then forwards users to the real site.

The malicious attacker can then access the victim’s personal information, such as address and birthdates, stored on their MySpace account. The scam has since been shut down, Websense officials said in published reports.

Accessing the fake site also automatically installs a cookie on the victim’s computer, preventing the phishing attack from being displayed on future MySpace visits, the Websense alert said.

The more than 70 million users of MySpace, one of the world’s most visited websites, are becoming an increasingly attractive target for malicious attackers, experts have said.

MySpace is a very popular Web site with teenagers and college-age people. Members can create a homepage featuring photos of themselves and their friends, journal entries, graphics, music clips and more. They can link to other MySpace pages and send messages back and forth.

MySpace has developed into a huge Web-based community.

Recent visitors to Valley Mall in Halfway talked about their experiences on MySpace.

Nicole Walker, 20, who attends West Virginia University, has a MySpace page and checks out other pages. She likes seeing people’s photos of themselves. One of the funniest photos, she said, is a shot of “Milk Boy – a guy that has milk all over him.”

J.D. Rid, 21, of Hagerstown, said he keeps in touch with friends through his MySpace page. He said he has heard about potential dangers of MySpace – people sending threatening messages or stalking other MySpace members – but he’s not worried.

“There are threats all over the Internet,” he said.

Erick Armer, 20, lives in Falling Waters, W.Va. He said he uses his MySpace page to communicate with friends. He likes being able to check out other people’s profiles. As for protecting himself from MySpace related danger?

“I use common sense,” he said.

Carrie Miller, 21, of Smithsburg, said she likes meeting new people on MySpace. She feels safe but worries that it might not be safe for younger kids.

More and more elementary and middle school students have been setting up pages. MySpace does offer many things such as chatting, dating, music and so on. Members sometimes set up face-to-face meetings. It can be fun to meet virtual friends face to face, but it can be dangerous.

But most of the time, MySpace is a fun site, according to Allyson Moore, 12, of Hagerstown. She has been using MySpace since she was 9. Her safety tips include:

Know who you’re talking to.

Don’t give out personal information such as your address, school, phone numbers or e-mail address.

Never agree to meet face to face with someone you don’t know.

Don’t say nasty or hurtful things in blogs or Internet diaries.

MySpace.com is described as an Internet site devoted to social networking. Any rational adult who’s spent more than a few minutes on MySpace might well conclude that it, like much of cyberspace, appeals to the lowest common denominator. I won’t bore – or repulse – you with specifics. Let’s just say that you probably wouldn’t feel comfortable with your mother, unless mumsie is Madonna, visiting many MySpace pages.

Tasteless photos and cartoons and deviant thoughts litter the website. Catchphrases rule. Banal ideas are expressed in crude English.

There are folks, often women, seen in shopping malls carrying on lengthy cell phone conversations. You might ask, as I have, is there really another person on the other end of that long, mind-numbing conversation? Hearing snippets of chatter along the lines of “I just had a taco, I like tacos, do you like tacos?, what are you eating?,” I’ve sometimes wondered where in the world the callers find anyone willing to put up with such extended blather.

Now I think I know. My guess is that they get their phone buddies on MySpace. There are some very lonely people there.
Obviously, MySpace isn’t my place. But some adults might find what they’re looking for there, and that’s their business. Unless, of course, if what they’re looking for is a child to molest.

The biggest problem is that MySpace, which claims to be “a place for friends,” has become a playground for sexual predators. To register, a user only has to be at least 14 years of age. That restriction is easily ignored. There have been numerous reports of crimes and attempted crimes against children in which the site has played a role.

MySpace may be a victim of its own success. With a reported user base in the tens of millions and a quarter of a million people signing up daily, the three-year old site may not have been prepared for the abuses it’s experienced.

In April, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the Advertising Council, and News Corporation, which owns MySpace, started running public service advertisements intended to raise awareness of Internet safety. In May, a law targeting “social networks” and Internet chat rooms was proposed in Congress. The legislation would block access to those sites in federally funded schools and libraries.

Many schools have already decided on their own to limit access on their computers. In a move that was guaranteed to fan the flames of teen outrage, a school district in Illinois recently took action to hold students accountable for what they post on websites such as MySpace. Actions like that are usually condemned as censorship. To which the appropriate response may well be, so what? Children don’t have the same rights as adults. And acting goofy online at taxpayer expense isn’t constitutionally protected, no matter what the ACLU may claim.

On the other hand, regulating access to social networking sites is much easier said than done. One need not have the technological prowess of Internet inventor Al Gore to circumvent many blocking measures. Add to that the government’s general clumsiness in securing whatever results it intends and there realistically isn’t much reason to think that legislation will have a great impact.

If there’s going to be anything close to a resolution of the problems inherent to MySpace and similar sites, it’ll have to be initiated by parents. Knowing where children go on the Internet, what they do there, and with whom they communicate are essential. There is monitoring software that can help.

Kids might scream about their privacy being violated, but families aren’t democracies. They’re dictatorships and part of a parent’s responsibility is to protect their children as best they can for as long as they can.

Last month a reporter wrote in the Los Angeles Times that she’d covered many disquieting events in her career, “But in nearly two decades of journalism, nothing has made my insides churn like seeing what my 13-year-old daughter and her friends are up to on MySpace.com.”

MySpace isn’t for everyone. We can only hope enough parents realize that in time.

Security watchers have discovered a phishing attack targeting users of MySpace, the social networking website. The attack comes in the form of a hyperlink sent to potential marks in an AOL instant messaging message.

Users who follow the link are taken to a bogus website that spoofs the MySpace.com login page. The ruse is designed to fool users into handing over account information to crooks. Surfers duped into handing over this information are subsequently forwarded to the real MySpace.com website.

According to net security firm WebSense, the fraudulent site also sets a “cookie on the victim’s computer, which prevents the phishing attack from being displayed on any subsequent visits”.

The MySpace phishing email is another example of how email fraudsters are widening their sights beyond traditional targets, such as eBay and high street banks, alongside moves to develop more sophisticated scams.

Question: My children have set up MySpace profiles, even though they were not supposed to. They insist that only their friends have access to their profiles, but how can a parent be sure? How do I know?

I just entered my daughter’s e-mail address and went straight to her page, although I could not go any further because I had to be a member to log in. Even at that, I was surprised at the info that was available.

They think they are so smart about how they manage their profiles. What can we do?- Nancy Heslin, via e-mail
A: Overnight, MySpace replaced the convenience store parking lot or mall fountain as a gathering place for children starting in junior high school or earlier.

As you indicate, each young user gets a home page containing a personal photo and a self-composed profile, as well as a message board to exchange info with friends and a blog spot to post thoughts with friends and others.

Put your foot down and demand that your children give you the same access that they give to their friends and other MySpace members. Then add that MySpace page to the Favorites in your own browser and make a daily practice of checking things out.

Better yet, take a couple of minutes and set up your own MySpace account so you can watch your children’s MySpace space as a logged-in user. Signup is quick and simple.

If you just go to http://www.myspace.com/ and browse the postings, you will find a range of age groups where children registered as being ages 14 and 15 are communicating with 30- and 35-year-old men and women and where few holds seem to be barred. MySpace operators post warnings that children must be 14 and must not lie about their age, but there is nothing to stop a much younger child from joining.

When a person signs up for a MySpace account, many privacy and security options can be set to minimize the downside on this Internet phenomenon that brings huge upside socializing for its audience.

For example, you can discourage unknown people from getting through to your child by requiring that a valid e-mail address be provided before that person can be added to the Friends list that is the heart and soul of this Web service designed to foster socializing.

Likewise, you can set the account to hide your children from being listed to all comers when they go online; you can stop others from passing along e-mail links to download your child’s photo and restrict blog posts to only people you know. You can even block the feature where music from a favorite band gets played when your child visits somebody else’s area on MySpace, which will guard against sexually and racially offensive lyrics.

As a parent, you even can order your children’s accounts closed by going to http://www.myspace.com/ and clicking on the Safety item at the bottom of the page.

You also can find links in a special parents’ area that point to software that can be installed on a computer to let you monitor every keystroke the children make and to otherwise watch and censor their access.

A “phishing” site that harvested the log-in and credentials of MySpace.com users was removed as of Friday from a California server, a security vendor reported.

A phishing attack involves tricking users into visiting a look-a-like webpage that asks for personal information, which is then sent to a hacker.

The rich trove of personal information stored on MySpace user pages is making the social networking site an increasingly attractive target for identity theft, said Ross Paul, a senior product manager at Websense, which makes security software.

The attack would not have been noticed by most users, Paul said. The attack starts when a user is sent a link through AOL’s instant-messaging program or a similar one.

The link is from someone in the user’s contact lists, asking the user to click the link to MySpace to view photos, Paul said. The link leads to a fraudulent MySpace log-in page. Once the victim enters the information, he or she is then transparently logged into the real MySpace pages, Paul said.

But a hacker then has access to personal information stored by MySpace, such as someone’s address and birthday, which could be used to open a bank account, Paul said.

A hacker can also tap other instant-messaging contacts or e-mail addresses to send out the link to the phishing site, which often is done using automated programs.

“The rising popularity of this kind of meeting place is obviously increasing the potential for financial gain,” Paul said. “The more information you give MySpace, the more at risk you would be if someone managed to get a hold of your log-in information.”

MySpace, started in 2004 and bought by News Corp. last year, counts at least 73 million users and is growing. MySpace’s “viral” networking model allows friends of friends to easily connect, but sexual predators have also used its features to meet underage victims.

As a result, MySpace appointed a chief security officer in April and implemented careful page monitoring.