MySpace concerns

this myspace craze makes me want to vomit, my kids click on profiles and some of the pics are teens and preteens rebelling i guess and post provocative, lewd and illegal pics of themselves.
i have added myspace to my hosts file and the kids are livid, they claim now they cant chat with their friends. i tell them to aolIM but they say its not the same. i dont care!
the owner of the site claims its heavly modded. bull$hit!!!
while searching for their cousin, they used her name for the search and found a 17 year old female in n.j. so they clicked on it and lo and behold there was some young kid posting pics of his boner from all angles.WTF???

my kids say they dont care and the pics dont mean anything and ask what do i think will happen to them from seeing an erect penis. i dont give a shhit i replied and i unplugged the pc in a mean way.

i hope other parents still hold on to the same values i try to uphold.
i wish i knew a uberhacker who would take down the site for good, i would trade an arm for the service.
btw, my girls are 13 and 14.

im no quaker by ANY means but hey, as a parent it is our right to preach the right thing even if we break it ourselves. once they are 18 and i no longer have a legal right to tell them what to do, if they live in my house its still my rules.

yes im venting, im pissed off.

 

MySpace.kiddeporn??

Yup. I just don't get Myspace. I have an account, but it's just not me. I'm not social enough to get it.
I don't have kids at this point, but if I do, I will have ground rules. Depends on the situation, but I have no doubt that certain things will be unpopular. Of course, some of the house rules my parents had sucked too.
You pay the bills, buy food, etc. so, yes, you can make the rules.

From the Myspace POV, I will grant them this: monitoring every single user is impossible. You can't catch, or provide an infalliable means of preventing someone from uploading offensive material. If people don't report it and they don't catch it, it get's missed. I'm not trying to excuse them necessarily, but just as an admin here, I definitely see how things get missed.

Still, with all the wierdos out there, I don't see any reason why parents are blocking MySpace. Once they move out, no matter how much kicking and screaming they did, that you weren't doing what you were doing just to be mean. The older people do have wisdom, but when you're a teen, it's a load of crap. That's just the way it is. Keep truckin'.

 

Does anybody else find the whole myspace/facebook slightly iffy? I mean, a while ago I got an invite from a long lost friend to join facebook. Great!! I hadn't spoken to him in ages. For some reason i didn't follow the link but went to the site under my own steam and went ot take up the offer to find out which of my friends were already on the site. All i had to do was give them my email account and password! password!!!!!!!!!!!! YOu must be joking!!

And the idea of putting details about yourself on the net for potentially anybody to read!! That just plain scares me.

I dont know if i'm paranoid, ....well yes actually i am, especially when it comes to computers but it strikes me as odd that we all have our aliases on forums annd various sites on the net, yet we'll willingly put our private information and advertise our circle of friends on MySpace! :smahd:

 

Myspace i found to be just, well, rubbish to be honest, i understand the ideas of these social networks but its a horrible setup

Facebook however has actually been a godsend, I moved away from my home town where I grew up after uni and lost contact with just about everyone. Through Facebook i've got back in contact with tons of them, meeting up with a load of friends in a couple of months for a reunion. Plus its quite handy for sharing photo's with friends and such.

What has been useful is that facebook does provide more security, you can set your account so that only approved firends can see anything on your account so any private information is only shown to trusted people.

It can have its uses, i wouldnt use it to make new friends but its very handy for keeping in touch with old friends....

 

I think you can do this in MySpace too

 

Facebook just seems easier and more streamlined. MySpace is supposed to be about building kind of a home page of yourself on the 'net, so it is really customizable in how you make it look (relative to facebook, anyway). MySpace also has a bunch of other crap designed to suck up your time, like ads about shows or new bands or other weird stuff on their home page... i don't even know. But anyway, I don't care about any of that -- I just want a quick, convenient way to stay in touch with friends. And facebook works very well for that. And facebook also has way less clutter in the form of banner/flash ads.

Also, I don't see the problem in putting my name on the net and advertising your circle of friends. My family's name is in the phone book too, and that's not a problem. And it's not like I'm a highly sought-after criminal or a CIA agent or even a really rich guy. So therefore, why would anyone who I don't personally know care about my personal info?

 

Identity theft!!!!!!

Its recently been coming to light that criminal gangs have been using such pages to help gather info on possible victims.

I'm not saying that this will happen to everybody, of course it wont, but in the electronic world my attitude is you cant be too careful.

 

But someone can't steal your identity just because he or she knows your name and the names of your friends... People don't (I hope) post their credit card info or social security numbers on social networking sites, which is what you really need for activities like identity theft and fraud.

On the other hand, I admit your comment about gangs carries some weight. I can see how that may possibly endanger someone. But to me, personally, that still seems extremely unrelated because I live in a good neighborhood and never visit ghetto places. So I still don't think it's possible that I'll get mugged or something on my way to school because of stuff I put on facebook about myself.

 

i'll second that, and even then, i think people freak out to much about nothing, dumb thing happen because people do dumb things, and they need something to blame it on.

 

Well yes, I understand where you're coming from with what you're saying. Just from the information you may put on Myspace or Facebook nobody can steal your identity using solely that information but from what I understand of the whole identity theft thing getting your bank details and social security number isn't the sole objective. I'm sure criminals would have an endless list of things that they could do if they had lots of information about somebody, for example why go to the trouble of stealing documents when you have all the necessary information to apply for the real thing in the victims name.

So getting back to the subject, say theres somebody's identity I want to steal and I go to their Myspace page. Great, straight away I have where they went to school which gives me an area to start searching in for their parents house and names using just the phone book. In my old town the local paper printed our grades for GCSE'S and A Levels so maybe you could get the individuals grades too. I was born in the same area I went to school in so you could list the local hospitals and do some snooping to try and find out if they were born there too. Do you see where I'm going?

To quote a Mr Gump, I'm not a smart man but if you knew the system and you were a career criminal Myspace and Facebook just make life a lot easier. Do you see what I mean?

Never has a truer word been spoken

 

I got a Myspace account, but there are many people that want to be added as a friend. It then appears they just want to be added to promote themselves. Also you can only modify the graphical theme of your page when using IE, because other browsers aren't supported.