In light of recent security concerns and a lawsuit, the popular social networking site, MySpace, announced it would be increasing it's efforts to protect younger users. While MySpace already prevents children under the age of 14 from signing up, there has been a lot of pressure for them to do more in keeping predators away from children. Under the new plan, any user age 18 and over will not be able to send a friend request to another user who is younger than 18 years old without previously knowing the young member's full name or email address.
Many people continue to worry, however, because the system is far from being fool proof. Member's 18 and under can still freely send friend requests to their older counterparts. The new system can also easily be bypassed if one were to lie about their age and claim they are under the age of 18. Because of this, many feel the entire scheme is going to be relatively ineffective.
MySpace expects to have it's new protection measures fully in place and running sometime next week.
