MySpace sued for $30m after assault on 14-year-old
Print storyLawyers seeking 'bare minimum' in damages
Posted in Music and Media, 20th June 2006 15:30 GMT
Understand how application security is evolving
A Texas woman has filed a $30m lawsuit against MySpace.com after her 14-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted by someone she met through the site.
The suit alleges that MySpace does not do enough to protect its under-age users, according to a report in the Austin American Statesman, and includes news reports of other sexual assaults that took place after people met on the MySpace network.
The lawyer representing the family, Adam Loewy, told the newspaper: "MySpace is more concerned about making money than protecting children online."
"We feel that one per cent of that is the bare minimum, that they should compensate the girl for their failure to protect her online when they knew sexual predators were on that site," he said.
He argues that none of the registration information the site requires needs to be true, and nothing is done to verify a user's age.
MySpace.com's chief security officer Hemanshu Nigam issued a statement saying: "We take aggressive measures to protect our members. We encourage everyone on the internet to engage in smart web practices and have open family dialogue about how to apply offline lessons in the online world." ®
The future of SaaS and IT infrastructure management
The Total Economic Impact of Dell's PC products and services
The best practices guide for application security
Avoiding 7 common mistakes of IT security compliance
The starter PKI program
Win a Samsung C6625!
Is your cameraphone an oxymoron?
Windows 7, Bing and security: Mr Ballmer regrets
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter