Myspace Privacy 101
Founded in 2003, MySpace has more than 80 million registered users worldwide and is the world’s third most-viewed Web site.
Due to the increasing abuses of members utilizing the under 14 years old feature to make profiles private, myspace has cracked down by deleting profiles that are under 14 for users who are obviously over it. Furthermore, A 14-year-old Travis county girl who said she was sexually assaulted by a man she met on MySpace.com, sued the popular social networking site for $30 million, claiming that it fails to protect minors from adult sexual predators. In a written statement, Hemanshu Nigam, the chief security officer for MySpace.com, stated “We take aggressive measures to protect our members. We encourage everyone on the Internet to engage in smart web practices and have open family dialogue about how to apply offline lessons in the online world.” Maybe the lawsuit was the catalyst needed to rectify the problem myspace had inadvertently created by not allowing privacy settings on myspace. Consequently, by creating privacy profiles for underage users and not affording the same opportunities to adult users, they created a breeding gorund for abusive behavior among users.
Better late than never. At least now you can make your profile private and act your age.
1. Sign in and go to account settings
2. Click privacy settings in the new page.
3. Select my friends only (in the privacy settings box)
4. Make sure in the edit your profile settings, under basic info, you have the appropriate age.
At least this attempt to rectify their mistakes, they are truly trying to make the web a safer place for all people.
Furthermore, you adjust some other settings under Account Settings to help make your myspace adventures more discrete. Under Privacy Settings, where you can make your profile private, there are an array of new options myspace has added to safeguard against spammers, and just plain outright myspace abuse. You will find options such as:
1. Hide online status
2. Show birthday only to friends
3. Comment approval before posting & friend only blog comments
4. Require name or email to add you as friend
5. Disable picture forwarding
6. Block friend request from bands
7. Disable band songs from automatically playing when visiting a page
Moreover, take advantage of the blocked users list, if you really want to keep someone from contacting you under Account Settings.
Nevertheless, I am certain that this step forward in securing a rather large space of the social cyber network is a positive one. It is imperative to help make the web a safer place for children, and it is very important for all myspace users to accurately represent themselves online to curtail abuses of the website.
