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How to catch a paedophile on Myspace
Author: Ryan GarsidePublished: 17th October 2006
MySpace is a popular site for children and it would seem paedophiles.
Five months ago Poulsen wrote a few lines of code which searched through Myspace's 1 million plus user profiles searching for the names and addresses of anyone who is on the sex offenders list. That code uncovered 39 year-old Andrew Lubrano, father of five, a convicted sex offender, who it seemed was once again up to no good.
The code looked through Myspace profiles, searching for 385,932 registered sex offenders in 46 US states. Poulsen claims that Myspace said that what he was doing was not possible. Poulsen discovered 497 people registered on Myspace had committed sexual crimes against children. Most of these people turned out to be using Myspace innocently or simply not using it at all but then Poulsen stumbled upon a 39 year old man named Lubrano. Here is an extract from the original article which you can read here:
"Lubrano stood out early in the results. His rap sheet was chilling, and by the time I found him, a half-a-dozen underage boys populated his friends list, many commenting on his message board. He lavishes particular attention on Jacob (not his real name), the 14-year-old in Virginia, lamenting the distance from his home on Long Island to the house Jacob shares with his grandparents near Washington D.C. -- about a six hour drive. "Damn," he writes, "it's a shame you don't live close by boy the things we can do."
It's a truly shocking read – raising the question of how many sex offenders are using sites like Myspace incognito? Surely they can't all be as stupid as Lobrano and use their real names. Myspace has said since that it is hoping laws will come into place that will allow them to prohibit all registered sex offenders from signing up with the site. The article is a very interesting read, with more details about how Poulsen went about creating the code and how the police eventually invited Poulsen along to the stake out and eventual arrest of the sex offender.
Let us know your thoughts in the forum.
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Comments (28)
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Surely this kind of code could be incorporated to myspace and regular checks performed.
"Ban the internet", "MySpace a breeding ground for perverts" etc...
:(
Imagine the mess to someone's life if they were proven innocent, but the paper had ran with the story. No public apology would ever undo the damage of having been labelled a 'dirty paedo' to the nation.
In my opinion, if MySpace, Bebo or any other community sight were to ask for names and addresses of all users, so that they could check sex offender registers, it would only cause a bad reaction from those who complain about giving up personal details to websites, as the true paedophiles would use false details.
castrate all paedophiles!!!!!!! and if they do it again but them in jail for life and make them do forced labor and get gang raped by other prisioners.
I'll skip the death-penalty rant and move on to this statement. You say most cannot be rehabilitated, implying then that some can. Trouble is, despite even the best psych-analysis, it's damn near impossibe to tell whether or not a supposedly 'cured' offender woud re-offend. However, could you punish ALL convicted offenders who have served their time in order to prevent 'some' from re-offending?
Yeah damn right you could!! Its a disgusting crime probably the worst you can commit, the people who commit them should be hung plain and simple. To hell with rehabilitation!
the problem here is the kid's parents. theyre not violating their kid's privacy enough plain and simple. they should be prying into everything they do on the internet. "oh my kid is talking to a 40 year old man an awfull lot...AND theyre talking about some weiiird stuff that a kid his age probably should be talking about? HMMMMM?!". Lazy worthless parents. Heres the internet kids. you can find ANYTHING and ANYONE there. heres some personal bloggin sites and chat programs. Good now theyre occupied and i can go and not do my job as a parent now. *sarchastic applause*
as for killing sex offenders? come on, what a knee jerk unthought-out reaction. pitty them, theyre mentally ill. and be upset at the system for likely having made no effort to cure them other than throw them in jail.
but is anyone surprised?
The problem here (if you believe there is a problem) is not myspace, but the fact that these sex offenders are at large in the public, free to do what they want (ie. re-offend).
"Filtering" myspace, doesn't stop the problem. You'd have to reform the criminal justice system to do that.
Aggies
^^ What he said.
-monkey
And what if you're convicted but innocent? Whoops, you've just lost your genitals, sorry.
Anyone else find it funny that under Ethnicity all it lists is "Not Hispanic"? That must be all that matters then... As long as you're not Hispanic you're fine!
The problem (as I see it) is that people think that they can be safe and can keep their children safe. Guess what, you can't get over it. The world is a dangeroud place, bas stuff happens, even to children. If you want to give up your rights, go ahead, but leave everyone elses alone.
:EDIT: Somthing else that just occoured to me...
"Protect the children" is a lot like the "War on terror". They're both meaningless justifications for, well, pretty much anything. I think it's pretty sad that we live in a society with such a tenious grip on civilization that we would agree with the torture and castration of people based on a few meaningless words.
Wouldn't that be weird if people just stopped using the internet...I never even thought of that. I wonder what future versions of internet-like communication we will have.
He had a pretty long record, mostly related to child molestation, and lived with his mother near a school which was against the conditions of his parole. The police did next to nothing about that.
He would track her daughter down and try to talk to her, laugh at her, basically stalked her. Neither my friend nor her daughter have been able to leave the house much, alone, in case they bumped into him. 2 long years have gone by since he was first caught with her daughter.
---
Until a few days ago... she found he had a myspace page, complete with pictures of underage girls, some of which are/were 7-8 years old. She told the police and the FBI got involved. They got a warrant to search his house and found a lot more than was on his myspace - he was arrested, and now indicted in a federal court on over 200 counts of child pornography and charges pending on child molestation. He faces a considerable amount of jail time.
Finally some justice.
I wish myspace didnt exist.
As for the whole Myspace-hideout for predators... ehhh You know what, find something else to amp up.
I'm tired of this ****, seriously. If the kid goes to the mall or any other public places he will meet people. People that are good and people that are bad. Yes I agree, by pretending to be someone else predators can gain much more info through web sites like myspace. Either way people need to stop whining. Especially here in US. Acknowledge your fu***ing responsibilities. Teach your children not to listen loud music with headphones and not to be careful online. Just like you tough them not to get into cars with strangers.
It's not Myspace's fault that your kid is posting everything about him/herself there. Just like it is not Apple's fault that some people pump the volume up.
Still took too long.
However, these operations and subsequent investigations/hearings/trials can take a while to come to conclusion, so the general public won't see 'results' for a year or so. That often leads to the feeling that law enforcement aren't doing anything, which is far from true.
I completely agree that a lot of parents need to be more active in 'policing' their children, but everyone can help. If you see something dodgy on Myspace, or other such websites, report it to admins. If the admins find something illegal is happening, they are duty-bound to report it to the authorities.