After a comment from a reader, I have finally realized the major flaw in the way MySpace does business, especially with minors.
A concerned parent wrote asking about access to her child's private MySpace profile. Her child does not login to the computer at home, but in other places such as friends' places. But because her daughter has a private profile, she can not access it.
As I thought about the reader's problem, a major issue with MySpace finally became clear.
It seems there is no shortage of examples when it comes to users' stupidity on MySpace.
First there is the story of a 48 year old man who "lured girls" ages 13 -15 to his trailer to smoke his legally-posessed marijuana with him using his MySpace page. From the article:
Yet another MySpace user is paying for his profile. Maybe he should have opted for a private profile...or none at all.
Student Press Law Center is reporting that two students are being sued over a fake MySpace profile. Anna Draker, a high school principal at Clark High School in Texas claims that two students, "Benjamin Schreiber and Ryan Todd, both 16 years old, created a MySpace profile for her and posted false information, including doctored photographs, fabricated quotes and information indicating Draker was a lesbian."
Draker, a mother of two, claims out of pocket losses from missing work days and medical expenses.
Yahoo! news is reporting on a murder plot over a MySpace page that went down in Arizona.
Heather Michelle Kane, 22, was arrested after paying an undercover police officer $500 dollars up front and another $500 dollars when the job was done, to kill a woman who's picture appeared on her boyfriend's MySpace profile, requesting a picture of her dead body.
BBC News has details on an investigation into social networking sites by Which? which concludes that social networking sites such as MySpace and BeBo need to do more to protect their members. Protect their members from what...themselves?
I don't believe there is any way to view a private profile on MySpace. I am writing this because I have noticed an huge increase in traffic to this blog, resulting from searches regarding hacking private myspace profiles.
When you go to a private profile, the page checks to see if your friend ID is on the list of friends for the person you are trying to visit. If it is not, or if you're not logged in, the page will not show your request.
Why do you want to view a private MySpace profile? Please, leave a comment (you don't have to register and it's anonymous) and tell us your story. If the response is good enough, perhaps we can look into it.
**Included for archival reasons. No one is looking into it.**
An article revealing a glitch on MySpace has again shown just how poorly implemented MySpace is, and just how careless people are in thinking their information is safe...even with a "private" profile.
