Kevin Poulsen, current Wired editor and former hacker, explains in a recent Wired article how using 1000 lines of code over several Perl scripts he was able to find an astonishing 744 sex offenders on MySpace. 497 MySpace users are found to have committed sex crimes against children, and six of these are considered to be repeat offenders. At least 243 of the 497 have had convictions after the year 2000.

So just how was he able to do this? In May he began an automated search of MySpace members for 385,932 registered sex offenders from 46 states, which were taken from the Department of Justice’s National Sex Offender Registry website. Searches were conducted by first and last names, as well as limiting results to a five mile radius of the sex offender’s registered zip code.

As one might expect, the automated search turned up a number of false results, as well as those that were unverifiable. Poulsen then took it upon himself to manually sort through the results, often comparing photographs, ages, and other data that could help to identify them.

The result of this little experiment is the confirmation of what many parents have feared for some time; that MySpace is the perfect place for sexual offenders and perverts to prey upon innocent and naive children. But, it has also resulted in the at least one police apprehension of a suspected sex offender - Andrew Lubrano, 39, of Suffolk County, New York - who has had four sex crime convictions in the past 20 years.

Poulsen has also decided to make the code he used to conduct this research available to the general public, and it can be downloaded from here. Poulsen has stated that anyone is free to tinker with the code, improve it, and discuss the methodology used.

In yet another failure to take that left toin on Albuquerque, the AOL Thought Police gathered and published 10 million queries from 657,426 AOL users.

Unique numbers identify the searchers, but since many of the surfers ego searched and ran their own social security numbers some identities are easy to piece together.

The massive privacy breach is irretrievable as the data is already bit-torrented outside of AOL’s control.

Zoli’s Blog revealed the disaster on Aug 6, the day it occurred. Elliot Back did some quick egreps to find approximately 200 social security numbers. Researchers identified and outed at least one formerly-anonymous AOL user. Since AOL is now a re-branding of Google search marketers are using the data to refine AdSense ventures (ring tone, ring tones, ring tones for cell phone, ring tones for cell phones, ring tones garth brooks…).

I found several dozen references to “suicide” and “murder.” Presumably these terms correlate with the fact that the searchers are AOL subscribers.

 

 

It was only a matter of time before something like this happened; a fourteen year old girl and her mother are sueing MySpace over an alledged sexual assault that occured after the girl met a 19 year-old offline.

The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in Travis County, Texas, claims that MySpace is aware that sexual predators get in touch with minors on the site, but do nothing to stop it.

They are seeking damages for fraud and negligence in misrepresenting the site’s security measures to protect minors.  Additionally, the pair are seeking damages from Peter Solis, the accused 19-year-old, for alledged sexual assault and emotional distress.  They are seeking compensation of no less than $30 million.

The girl first came into contact with Solis on MySpace on April 6, when she claims he said that he was a high school senior that played on the football team. Soon after, the girl gave him her cell phone number.  The two met in person six days later, at which time they went on a date and the girl claims to have been sexually assaulted.

Okay, so where is MySpace responsible in all this?  Was it not the girl who gave out her phone number and met up with the guy?  And where were her parents in all of this? 

It’s no different than people meeting over AOL, or any other internet service or chat room.  Common sense tells you, the person you’re talking to online might not be who they say they are, so don’t give out your personal information or meet up with them unless you’ve set up extra precautions with a parent or something.

If the assault occurred, which in itself has not yet been proven, the ones I hold responsible are the young man, the girl, and her parents.  The young man for doing, and the girl and her parents for being so damn naive and stupid and allowing the meetup to occur in the first place.

If they make any money off this from MySpace, I will be sick.  So, what are thoughts on all this?

The RIAA has proven themselves even more pathetic in their latest attempt to stop us normal folks from having a little fun.  They are now going after YouTube & Google Video users who’ve made videos of themselves or others bopping along to copyrighted music.

Users are increasingly receiving DMCA take-down request letters for videos that include copyrighted music.  This includes people singing along to the music, as well as those dancing with the music playing in the background.

So now we won’t be able to laugh at the fools who make videos of themselves dancing to Britney Spears’ videos? Or the teeny-bopper sing-a-longs to Kelly Clarkson?  Dude, that sucks.

 

On Wednesday Google announced that they will shut down some Orkut communities, after leads from the Brazilan government suggesting that some advocate violence and human rights violations.

Google met with a Brazilian human rights commission on Tuesday, where they were presented with compelling evidence that some Brazilians have been using the invite-only service to commit crimes. They will shut down any communities that violate Orkut’s terms of service, which forbid “any illegal or unauthorized” purpose. 

Nearly 8 million Brazilians are members of Orkut, representing nearly a quarter of all Brazilians with internet access.  Some Orkut communities have recently been linked to drug dealing, organized fights, and even a plot to kill the President and plant a bomb in Congress.

“Orkut does not condone any of the communities that advocate violence and are a threat to human rights,” Nicole Wong, a Google attorney, said in a statement.

Google has tentatively agreed to remove site communities from Orkut, and work with police to help identify those who posted the pages.   This is only a preliminary agreement, and a final agreement is expected in 15 days.

Under the terms of the proposed agreement, Google would hold user information for up to six months to allow for Brazilian courts to issue subpeonas, if neccessary. Google would also be required to set up a Portuguese speaking team to monitor the communities.

Google has not confirmed whether they will be handing over user data, and stated that they were still waiting on Wednesday for a list of the questionable sites.

We’ll keep an eye on this situation, and update you with all the latest information.

Shaun Harrison (18) and Saverio Mondelli (19) allegedly hacked into MySpace and stole the personal information of an untold number of its users.  They thus threatened to share the stolen information with the world, unless MySpace agreed to pay them off - at the price of $150,000 USD.

The pair owned and operated myspaceplus.com, and developed a computer code which enabled them to get the personal information of MySpace users.

As clever as their ploy may have been, they weren’t clever enough.  They were arrested Friday when attempting to collect the $150,000 payoff in Los Angeles. 

The pair have been each charged with illegal computer access and attempted extortion. Bail has been set at $35,000, and a preliminary hearing will take place on June 5.

When will these kids ever learn?  Don’t mess with the gov’t and don’t mess with News Corp. Stay away from the illegal stuff, eh?