Hacker Catches MySpace Predator

(Kevin Poulsen has) been invited here to witness the end-game of a police investigation that grew from 1,000 lines of computer code I wrote and executed some five months earlier. The automated script searched MySpace's 1 million-plus profiles for registered sex offenders -- and soon found one that was back on the prowl for seriously underage boys.

That's something that MySpace has said it cannot do. Rather, it is seeking new laws that would make it easier to ban sex offenders from the site through an e-mail registry.

I'm skeptical as to how many sex offenders this will catch given that most are crafty enough to know better than to use their real names on MySpace, but something like this should be in place anyway. The real lesson is to not let your kids wander aimlessly through cyberspace unaccompanied.