MySpace, States Sign Kids Online Safety Pact
MySpace Inc. and 49 state attorneys general last week culminated two years of discussions by agreeing to a new set of principles aimed at stepping up online safety on MySpace and other social networking sites.
As part of the agreement, MySpace will add some 60 new features intended to protect children from online predators, the attorneys general and MySpace officials said during a press conference in New York.
Source: Computerworld
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=311249&intsrc=news_ts_head
MySpace Bug Leaks 'Private' Teen Photos to Voyeurs
A backdoor in MySpace's architecture allows anyone who's interested to see the photographs of some users with private profiles -- including those under 16 -- despite assurances from MySpace that those pictures can only be seen by people on a user's friends list. Info about the backdoor has been circulating on message boards for months.
Since the glitch emerged last fall, it has spawned a cottage industry of ad-supported websites that make it easy to access the photographs, spurring self-described pedophiles and run-of-the-mill voyeurs to post photos pilfered from private MySpace accounts.
Source: Wired
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/01/myspace
MySpace Quietly Fixes Bug that Gave Voyeurs Access to Teens' Private Photos
Recently, it was reported that a bug in MySpace's architecture allowed strangers to peer inside the MySpace photo galleries of some private profiles, despite assurances from MySpace that those pictures can only be seen by people on a user's friends list.
The bug had been around since at least October, during which time it had been gleefully exploited by voyeurs, hackers, entrepreneurs and lechers; you can find pages and pages of public message board comments around the web in which posters are peeking in on 14 and 15-year-old girls and sharing what they find.
Ad-supported web sites with names like Can't Hide and MySpacePrivateProfile.com emerged to earn a buck off the glitch. One such site reports that its users have accessed, or attempted to access, 77,000 private profiles.
MySpace has, without comment, closed the backdoor, and the websites that were exploiting it are no longer delivering private photos.
Source: Wired
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/myspace-quietly.html
Right on the heels of the announcement that MySpace had agreed with 49 states to a new set of principles targeted at beefing up security on its social networking website, came information that since at least last October, a bug in the MySpace architecture allowed strangers to access private MySpace profiles. Apparently, there were even websites set up where people who accessed these profiles could chat about and distribute what they had found. A day later, after the bug was made public, MySpace fixed it, although they did so without comment.
While MySpace apparently is taking positive steps to increase the security of its members, it still seems to me that in light of the bug that existed, either MySpace didn't know it existed or they were not proactive in fixing it until it became public. I'm no techie, but given the information, it seems reasonable to me to assume that other bugs might exist that may or may not have already been exploited. Therefore, it also seems reasonable to me to assume that MySpace isn't as secure as parents might think or hope. Is it too much of a stretch for parents to operate under the assumption that even if their kids' profiles are set to private, that they can still be accessed by people with sinister motives? As of this writing, I don't think it is. Until the time that MySpace can assure that private profiles are truly private, I would encourage parents to act as if anything posted to their kids' profiles can be found by anyone with enough tenacity to find them.
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