Over the past two years, MySpace.com has barred 90,000 users that it has identified as registered sex offenders from their social networking site through background checks, the company recently revealed to authorities. The shocking number of sex offenders – people found guilty of sex crimes and ordered to register with law enforcement officials – was 40,000 more than MySpace had previously acknowledged. In 2007, some 29,000 sex offenders were blocked from MySpace with background checks.

For those of you who have been living on Mars – or who are not members of Generations X, Y, or even Z now – MySpace is a popular social networking site that lets approximately 130 million users share, message, blog, and email each other to stay “connected” online. After reports that some of its growing number of teenage users were abducted by sex offenders, MySpace committed itself to making their site safer by using background checks. MySpace worked with a background check company to develop a national database that matched user profiles to data on convicted sex offenders.

Thanks to the use of background checks, this recent revelation from MySpace shows that sexual offenders can be as much of a problem online as they are offline. Users – and parents of users – of highly popular social networking sites like MySpace who interact with “virtual strangers” who may in fact be sexual offenders should not wait for someone else to perform their background checks for them. Consumer ordered background checks are on the rise, signaling an increasing effort by individuals to take responsibility for their own protection, and the protection of their family and friends, from sex offenders and other violent criminals.

MyBackgroundCheck.com – a leader in consumer ordered background check services and member of the Pre-employ.com Family of Companies – believes individual background checks are a necessary tool for protecting children, teens, and young adults from sex offenders in today’s computerized world. For more information on MyBackgroundCheck.com, please visit www.MyBackgroundCheck.com, email info@mybackgroundcheck.com, or call 1-800-503-2364.

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