According to the Wall Street Journal (registration required) today, MySpace is getting ready to release some interesting data to law-enforcement authorities. According to the Journal, “MySpace says it has identified and deleted the profiles of about 7,000 registered sex offenders”.

Wow. Seven thousand. Sex offenders. On MySpace. With your kid.

And that’s just the ones they know about. The article quoted Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal:

Mr. Blumenthal commended MySpace for its release but said the data are “limited in ultimate value because convicted-sex-offender profiles are probably just the most visible tip of the predator problem on MySpace.” He added that “the real problem now is the thousands of other predators that have never been convicted or are using aliases.” (emphasis mine)

What does this mean for you? It means that if you have kids, you had better make sure that you are aware of and involved with their online experience. It’s not just MySpace, either. Your kids might not be on MySpace, but even simple Google search can take you some places that will make your eyes burn.

It’s important to be involved with your children online. We’ve posted some great articles on Moral Metric about this. If you have kids, you need to read these articles:

• Moral Metric: Taming the Tech Tyrant: What You Need to Know About Teens & Technology
• MySpace: Total Abstinence Guarantees Zero Protection
• Articles tagged ‘MySpace’ on Moral Metric

Moral Metric is a really neat project I’ve been working on for a while now. We have a ton of awesome resources for parents, including articles, movie reviews, web safety products, and even video games. We also have a budding community of people who are concerned about their kids and want to make informed parenting decisions.