« Company-Specific Online Safety Initiatives

MySpace

Promoting Online Safety and Keeping Teens Safe

The Internet is fraught with the same dangers we face every day in the physical world. We at MySpace are dedicated to making the online world as safe as our physical world and have taken serious steps to ensure the safety and security of all of our members, especially that of our younger users. In the physical world we protect kids and teens from inappropriate content by not allowing them to access or buy it, and we protect kids and teens from inappropriate contact by adults by keeping them away from strangers. We are in the process of creating these same solutions in the online world of MySpace.

Over the past year, MySpace has implemented a site wide safety infrastructure based on age, as well as numerous other features designed to increase the safety of all of our members.

First, in order to make sure that all of our users are over fourteen years of age we both utilize a search algorithm that finds individuals misrepresenting their age and search out underage users by hand. We delete about 25,000 profiles per week for age misrepresentation.

Then, for those younger users on our site we have established safeguards to protect them from inappropriate content and from unwanted contact from adults they do not know.

We protect them from inappropriate content by blocking inappropriate URLs from being posted on our site, alcohol and tobacco ads are prohibited from reaching users under 18 and under 21, smoking and drinking preferences are blocked for users under 18 and under 21, user accounts are deleted for uploading inappropriate images and every image, group, profile, video and classified (over 7 million images daily) is reviewed by hand. We also have created an extensive reporting mechanism for those images, groups, profiles, videos and classifieds that our users find objectionable.

We protect them from unwanted contact from adults they do not know by assigning users under 16 private profiles, not allowing users under 18 to access mature groups, not allowing users to browse for users under 16, only allowing users over 18 to add users under 16 as a friend if they know the younger user’s last name or email address and by our newly developed over/under blocking feature which allows users under 18 to block users over 18 from viewing their profile or contacting them.

In addition to these changes on MySpace.com, we are also firm proponents of education on Internet safety and the necessity for an open dialogue between parents and their kids about Internet safety. We have Safety Tips on every page for users and for parents, and users under 18 must review and agree to the Safety Tips upon sign-up. We have created a Parent Safety Brochure in conjunction with Seventeen Magazine that includes tips and information for parents and teens; it can be found on our website. We also have created a guide tailored to the needs of the educational community called “MySpace: The Official School Administrator’s Guide to Understanding MySpace and Resolving Social Networking Issues.” Additionally, we have created a guide for Law Enforcement to use when they need our assistance with various matters.

MySpace will continue these efforts, constantly expanding how we protect our younger users, as well as all of our users, while they are on the Internet. We will emulate the safety of the physical world in the online world. Please visit www.myspace.com/safetytips for additional information.