The U.S. Attorney in New York, Andrew Cuomo, announced that thirteen of the major social networking sites will veto the access to users with a history of sexual harassment through the e-STOP.
"It's no secret that sexual harassment and abuse of social networks to find and manipulate their victims, so these companies have taken an important step in making the Internet a safer place through the use of e-STOP," said Cuomo in a statement today.
After the popular social networks Facebook and MySpace announced last week it had eliminated 3,500 sexual predators among its users, the companies AOL, Google and Yahoo take the same measures to their websites dedicated to communication and information exchange .
AOL's social network, Bebo, that of Google, Orkut, and the multiple sites of Yahoo such as Flickr, BlackPlanet, Classmates, Flixster, Fotolog, hi5, MyLife, Stickam and tagged, form the list of portals that join the fight against sexual abuse with Multiply, and Imeem, recently acquired by MySpace.
Despite the welcome of the initiative, websites Friendster, Buzznet, hawthorn, Habbo and LiveJournal have not yet joined the e-STOP program, which offers a database of abusers.
"What some companies still refuse to use the database of e-STOP is not only inexcusable but poses a potential danger," the prosecutor said.
The e-STOP, launched by Cuomo and entered into force in 2008, became the first such law requiring sex offenders to report to the relevant record from upstate New York for their email addresses as well as other user names that are identified in the network.
Furthermore, pedophiles who are on probation and who contacted their victims via Internet, will be prohibited access to any social network, pornographic material and contact with children under eighteen.
Cuomo invited Since the December 1 seventeen social networks to use the database e-STOP to eliminate sexual harassment from their websites, twelve of these companies have welcomed the initiative and another has requested access to the system.
Also, major U.S. internet providers for the first time pledged last year to rid their servers of Web sites devoted to child pornography.
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