A TEENAGER is facing child pornography charges after posting nude photos of herself on her MySpace page.
The 14-year-old girl from New Jersey was arrested after uploading 30 explicit images to the social network, according to US media reports.

She posted her photos “because she wanted her boyfriend to see them”, a police spokesman said.

Authorities arrested her after receiving an online tip-off about the images, which could have been viewed by anyone who “friended” her on MySpace.

MySpace has not commented on the incident, but has a team which reviews content uploaded to the social network.

The New Jersey case is the latest in a series of legal wrangles surrounding teenagers’ use of mobiles and the internet.

In a separate case, three teenage girls are suing a US prosecutor who accused them of peddling “child pornography” after semi-nude pictures of them were sent by phone to friends.

Teachers alerted the authorities after discovering a waist-up image of two girls covered just by a bra and another image of a girl topless.

District Attorney George Skumanik called for the girls to undergo five weeks of behaviour courses and take a drug test or face prosecution, according to a letter apparently sent to the teenagers’ parents.

The American Civil Liberties Union, a co-signatory to the lawsuit, said Mr Skumanik’s threat was unconstitutional, and prosecution could have landed the girls on the sex offenders’ register, harming future job prospects.

“In many states these charges would land these kids on (sex offender) databases … for 10 years or more, and prevent them from getting many types of jobs,” said Witold Walczak, from the ACLU in Pennsylvania.

“That’s a heck of a lesson for a kid who probably doesn’t even realise she is doing something wrong.”

The New Jersey girl faces up to 17 years in jail if convicted of possession and distribution of child pornography. She could also be placed on a state register of sex offenders.

The girl has been released into her mother’s custody, and NorthJersey.com reported there may be more arrests on the way. “We consider this case a wake-up call to parents,” police said.

MySpace said it will develop technologies to help block convicted sex offenders.

MySpace is partnering with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to build a database containing names, physical descriptions and other identifiable details on sex offenders in the United States. The News Corp. site, however, stopped short of adopting Sentinel’s technology for verifying the ages and identities of its users.

The database, to be called Sentinel Safe, “will allow us to aggregate all publicly available sex offender databases into a real-time searchable form, making it easy to cross-reference and remove known registered sex offenders from the MySpace community,” Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace’s chief security officer, said in a statement.

Parents, school administrators and law-enforcement authorities have become increasingly worried that teens are finding trouble at social-networking sites, which provide tools for messaging, sharing photos and creating personal pages known as profiles.

The aim of such sites is for users to expand their circles of friends — and critics say those circles sometimes include predators, including those previously convicted of sexual crimes.

John Cardillo, Sentinel’s chief executive, said the database will give MySpace and other sites a tool to help keep out sex offenders.

I just recieved some more info about the MY SPACE dangers. I found out exactly how thieves are locating houses by using MY SPACE combined with a second awful site.When you sign up for “Your Space” you enter the following information:
Name, Age, City & State, Zodiac Sign, height, build, children’s info, hobbies, marital status and occupation. You may think that this information is innocent but it is not AT ALL.

There is another web site called “zabba.com” this site is a free search engine used to locate addresses & phone numbers (Even Unlisted #’s!) of anybody worldwide! All the person needs is your name. If they can enter your city as well it will help narrow down the amount of people they have to search through. However, since YOU listed your birthdate or age or your zodiac sign on MY SPACE, finding out which “Bob Jones” you are will be a breeze.

Once they have determined your address they cross reference this with your occupation listed on MY SPACE. If you are a “Hot Single, Night Shift Bartender at Lucky’s” they all ready know when you are not going to be home.

Parents are even using MY SPACE as a way to show friends their pictures of their lovely children – BAD IDEA. Any thieves or predators can now stalk your family from the privacy of their own home.
If “Your Space” says you “have two sons – ages 4 and 8 who are honor roll students at Parker Elementary”, this tells thieves that when you are not home, nor are they.
You can even reverse the rolls – parents, your children can say, “My mom works at the dentist office and my dad works at ford”.

Here’s a little more IMPORTANT, IMPORTANT about Zabba.com
whether it is cross referenced with MY SPACE or not, you can use it to find out some ones name, address, phone number, PARENTS NAMES, MOTHERS MAIDEN NAME, GRANDPARENTS ans every place your family has lived. This is very scary. I didn’t believe it. I entered my name and EVERYTHING listed appeared. Even how many criminal violations I have had (traffic tix).

I want to see if there is a way to get removed from the list. I was told that if you sign up for things on the internet you MUST read the fine print before you submit your info. I was told that sites can sell your presoanl information to third parites, zabba.com could easily be buying this info.
If you are interested in seeing EXACTLY what I have been talking about, I went to MY SPACE and found a perfect example of a profile. Here’s the link (Please copy and paste the entire link into your browser.):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=47386876  

******This is 29 year old woman. She innocently posted many pics of her children, husband to be and her self. She EVEN writes: “I spend my weekends watching my kids play soccer, basketball or baseball. I like to talk on the phone to anyone who will listen. I love to lay in bed all day on a Sunday and watch MTV with Mike.”

If anybody has more information about zabba.com or MY SPACE plase send it to me.

HERE’S THE LINK, try it for yourself:
http://www.melissadata.com/cgi-bin/peoplefinder.asp

 A 25-year-old man charged with luring a 15-year-old girl over the Internet and then sexually assaulting her was released yesterday after posting $75,000 bail.

Kalani Trujillo was charged with two counts each of first-degree sexual assault and third-degree sexual assault. Trujillo posted bail yesterday and was released from custody, the city prosecutor’s office said.
Trujillo and the girl met on the MySpace.com Web site and struck up a friendship. On July 10, Trujillo picked up the girl near her home and took her to his Salt Lake home, according to an affidavit filed in Honolulu District Court.

Once at his home, the two went into Trujillo’s bedroom and began to kiss, the affidavit said. Trujillo then asked the girl to remove her clothes, which she did, and the two had sex, the affidavit said.
In Hawai’i, it is a criminal offense for anyone to have sex with minors younger than 16 if the accused is more than five years older than the minor and is not married to the minor. In Trujillo’s case, he knew that the girl was 15, the affidavit said.

The girl reported the incident to police and identified Trujillo to police from a photographic lineup, the affidavit said.
On July 28, police with a search warrant went to Trujillo’s home and arrested him. Police said they also seized an unregistered handgun, but he has yet to be charged with that offense, the prosecutor’s office said.

The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed the Deleting Online Predators Act, which would require public schools and libraries to block student access to commercial social-networking sites such as MySpace.com.

The measure passed 410-15 on July 26.

DOPA would require public schools and libraries receiving federal funds for Internet access to provide a “technology protection measure” for minors to protect them from harmful material on the Internet, including child pornography, material that is obscene or harmful to minors, or “commercial social networking website(s) or chat room(s) unless used for an educational purpose with adult supervision.”

As applied to libraries, the measure provides that the “technology protection measure” must protect “against access by minors without parental authorization to a commercial social networking website or chat room, and informs parents that sexual predators can use these websites and chatrooms to prey on children.”

According to the factual findings in the bill, sexual predators often “approach minors on the Internet using chat rooms and social networking websites” and that “one in five children has been approached sexually on the Internet.”

“I am extremely pleased that the House moved so quickly to pass this important legislation,” said the measure’s chief sponsor, Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., in a press release. “This legislation is the first of its kind to address the growing use of social networking sites by sexual predators. Passage of the “Deleting Online Predators Act” demonstrates Congress’ commitment to safeguarding America’s families.”

Not everyone supports the proposed legislation. The American Library Association expressed disappointment July 26 at the House action.

“This unnecessary and overly broad legislation will hinder students’ ability to engage in distance learning and block library computer users from accessing a wide array of essential Internet applications including instant messaging, email, wikis and blogs,” said ALA president Leslie Burger in a news release.

“Under DOPA, people who use library and school computers as their primary conduits to the Internet will be unfairly blocked from accessing some of the web’s most powerful emerging technologies and learning applications,” Burger said. “As libraries are already required to block content that is “harmful to minors” under the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA is redundant and unnecessary legislation.”

Mark Uncapher, senior vice president and counsel for the Information Technology Association of America, also expressed opposition to DOPA.

“We have concerns that the legislation moved quickly without thorough committee review, particularly given existing law such as the Children’s Internet Protection Act,” Uncapher said.

CIPA, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld from First Amendment challenge in United States v. American Library Association (2003), requires public schools and libraries to adopt an Internet safety policy that protects minors from online obscenity, child pornography and other material harmful to minors.

ITAA’s position is that DOPA provides less flexibility than CIPA and is redundant.

“We are concerned that DOPA would micromanage schools and libraries (in their) management of their E-Rate funded systems,” Uncapher added. E-Rate is a federal program that makes some technologies more affordable for eligible schools and libraries.

The question now is whether a similar measure will be introduced for similarly quick passage in the Senate. Jeff Urbanchuk, Fitzpatrick’s press secretary, said House supporters were waiting for a companion bill to be introduced in the Senate. “We do think it will happen,” he said.

MySpace is experiencing technical difficulties which have forced the social networking site off the internet.

The site has been offline since 2:40am on 24 July. A message posted on the site blames the outage on a power cut at its data centre.

“We are in the process of fixing it right now, so sit tight. Hopefully we’ll be back online within the hour,” the message says. “It’s 6:40pm PST now. Wanna place a bet?” it asks.

MySpace has 95 million members and accounted for 4.5 per cent of all US internet visits in the first week of July, according to figures from web monitoring firm Hitwise.
The news about the site being down spread quickly among bloggers.

“It is hard to believe that a service this large could just have one data centre. Have they not heard of redundancy? I am pretty sure there is more to the story. One can only imagine how millions of MySpace users feel right now,” Om Malik wrote at GigaOM.

Another user on Live Journal expressed dismay that the site was unavailable. “If Tom [Anderson, founder of MySpace] was here, I’d deck him in the face. This has turned out to be one of the worst days of my life.”

To hijack someone’s photograph…

“My pictures my friends”

Meaning a devious web master can quickly become your impostor.

“I never thought it would happen to an average normal girl like me.”

Katie got a call from a friend who stumbled across a stranger’s Myspace page… But who she saw was no stranger… It was Katie… Someone had stolen her photos and started using them as their own.

“I nearly feel over that that was my main picture and they were using it as their main picture.”

“You just can’t believe it that someone has gone that far to do something like that.”

Katie’s brother Tim started to investigate and what he found is nothing short of disturbing…

Grant: “you’re big brother, what did you think?”

“It was just really shocking i couldn’t believe it. It’s my sister and next thing you know some guy, I know it was a guy was using her pictures.”

“I think it was a guy they way the profile was made it just doesn’t seem like a girl would put it together.”

They believe the impostor was actually trying to lure in other young men… With the help of MySpaceScams.com ; Myspace quickly shut the bogus site down. Leaving Katie issuing a warning about the new face of identity theft.

“Just be careful you never know who is going to go after your pictures or you or your identity.”

Fifteen years ago, Stephanie Lovatos’ two-year-old daughter, Celina Aquirie, disappeared with Celina’s father.Lovatos says she never stopped searching for Celina, but it wasn’t until late last month that she found her, through a popular teen Web site, MySpace.com.

The site is frequently in the news as a place where child predators try to find victims, but the case of Lovatos and Celina is very different.

The two had an emotional reunion Friday night at San Francisco International Airport.

“It’s been an amazing time for me,” Celina told The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen Wednesday. “I never thought this day would happen, and it’s just wonderful to be sitting next to her right now.”

Earlier, Lovatos told CBS News, “The clock couldn’t move fast enough,” in the airport, as she awaited Celina’s arrival. “I was going toward the gate, looking, watching the clock. They were the longest minutes of my life. Then, I started feeling the reaction. … ‘Oh, my God.’ I was never so terrified. I was hyperventilating. I was a wreck.”

Lovatos gave birth to Celina in Maui, Hawaii in May of 1989. She had shared custody with her boyfriend, but left him for a new life in California in 1991, taking Celina with her.

When Lovatos couldn’t find a home she considered suitable for her and the toddler, she asked the boyfriend in Maui to care for Celina temporarily.

The boyfriend and his new wife left Maui, without telling Lovatos. It turned out that they moved to Florida, and told Celina the boyfriend’s wife was her mother.

It was only when Celina stumbled on her birth certificate when she was 13 that she learned the truth.

All that time, says Lovatos, she was desperately trying to find her daughter.
“Back then, obviously, there was no Internet or anything like that,” she told Chen. “So, I first tried to get legal advice, and that’s when I was notified that neither of us had actual legal custody of her and, because of that, there was nothing (police) could do. I was just told that my best bet was just to find them on my own, and then I could, you know, obviously, try for my custody then.”

She never married, had three other children, earned a master’s degree in business, bought a home in San Jose, Calif., and is a project manager for a construction company.

Then, out of the blue, a brainstorm hit Lovatos: Why not use MySpace?

She had someone create a page for her in February and, in the area asking whom she’d like to meet, she put Celina’s name, saying: “If you ever see this, I have not seen you since you were two. I have been looking for you all this time. Get a hold of me. I have important information to tell you.”

On June 14, Lovatos got a call from a long-lost cousin, which made Lovatos realize she could access the MySpace search functionality.

Within minutes, Lovatos had found Celina’s page.

“I kept thinking,” Lovatos says, “twenty minutes on a … Web site, after 15 years of phone calls and searching,” is what it took.

Ironically, Celina says she doesn’t go on MySpace, and her boyfriend had created the page for her.

It took some phone calls and the intervention of that boyfriend and Lovatos’ best friend to finally hook them up but, when it happened, 15 years of anxiety came to an end.

“I said Celina, ‘This is Mom,” Lovatos recalls. “I started to choke up, and said, ‘Look, hear me out, don’t hang up. I just you need to know, I never abandoned you. You were taken from me, no one has ever let me know where you are. The past 15 years, I’ve never given up. I’ve looked for you. I love you and miss you.”

Celina says she’s note sure whether she’ll stay in California with Lovatos or return to Florida and her father.

MySpace.com is planning new restrictions on how adults may contact its younger users in response to growing concerns about the safety of teenagers who frequent the popular online social networking site.

The site already prohibits kids 13 and under from setting up accounts and displays only partial profiles for those registered as 14- or 15-years-old unless the person viewing the profile is already on the teen’s list of friends.

Under the changes, announced Wednesday and taking effect next week, MySpace users who are 18 or over could no longer request to be on a 14- or 15-year-old’s friends’ list unless they already know either the youth’s e-mail address or full name.

Any user will still be able to get a partial profile of younger users by searching for other attributes, such as display name. The difference is that currently, adults can then request to be added to a youth’s list to view the full profile; that option will disappear for adults registered as 18 and over. 

The partial profiles display gender, age and city. Full profiles describe hobbies, schools and any other personal details a user may provide.

But MySpace doesn’t check the truth in the profiles.

“A 12-year-old who uses MySpace told me on Friday you can always tell if someone’s older than they say they are because the first thing they ask you is your bra size,” Parry Aftab, executive director of Wiredsafety.org, said on CBS News’ The Early Show

Aftab told co-anchor Hannah Storm MySpace isn’t making enough of an effort to protect children online.

“I’m holding a summit in White Plains, N.Y., today where everybody but MySpace is coming to sit down and figure out what the we can all do, Parents, Xanga, Facebook, Bebo, [other online sites catering to teens], all of the other sites are sitting in a room with regulators and the FTC and everyone else to see what we can do to keep kids safer,” Aftab said.

Driven largely by word of mouth, MySpace has grown astronomically since its launch in January 2004 and is now second in the United States among all Web sites by total page views, behind only Yahoo Inc., according to comScore Media Metrix. The site currently has some 87 million users, about a quarter registered as minors, according to the company.

At MySpace, which was bought last year by News Corp. for $580 million, users can expand their circles of friends by exploiting existing connections, rather than meeting randomly or by keyword matches alone.

It offers a mix of features — message boards, games, Web journals — designed to keep its youth-oriented visitors clicking on its advertising-supported pages.

MySpace has recently become a target of parents, schools and law enforcement officials concerned that teens who hang out at MySpace can fall victim to sexual predators.

“MySpace has been under enormous pressure for months and the pressure is growing now that it’s being sued for by 14-year-old who was allegedly sexually assaulted by an adult who misrepresented his age,” says Magid.

The girl, in the suit filed this week, is seeking $30 million in damages. And earlier this month, a 16-year-old girl who tricked her parents into getting her a passport flew to the Mideast to be with a 20-year-old man she met through MySpace. U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded the teen to turn around and go home.

MySpace officials say the new restrictions have been long planned and are unrelated to recent events.

Besides the contact restrictions, all users — not just those 14 and 15 — will have the option to make only partial profiles available to those not already on their friends list.

All users also will get an option to prevent contact from people outside their age group. Currently, they may only choose to require that a person know their e-mail or last name first; that will remain an option to those 16 and over, even as it becomes mandatory for those younger.

MySpace also will beef up its ad-targeting technology, so that it can avoid displaying gambling and other adult-themed sites on minors’ profile pages and target special public-service announcements to them.

The changes follow a number of safety-related measures that includes the hiring of a former federal prosecutor and Microsoft Corp. executive as its online safety chief. MySpace already has developed safety tips for parents and children and devotes scores of employees to monitoring the site around the clock.

Children’s safety online shouldn’t be left solely to services like MySpace, says Aftab, who offered tips earlier this year on The Early Show.

“Parents have to be involved. Ask their kids if they have a MySpace or other social networking page, tell them you want to look at it tomorrow, giving them a chance to clean it up,” Aftab told Storm Wednesday. “If your kids aren’t listening to you, and you’ve set rules that you like, it’s time to unplug the computer.”

“I need somebody to be the parent in the house.”