Social Networking Site Adds Protections Against Sexual Predators

The social networking Web site MySpace, in agreeing to make sweeping changes that would prevent sexual predators from targeting youngsters on its site, could increase pressure on its competitors, including Facebook.

The new measures by MySpace, including the creation of a high school-only section of the Web site, go further than similar steps taken by Facebook in October.

In that deal, Facebook agreed to speed up its response time after an investigation by Attorney General Cuomo uncovered sexual predators prowling its pages. During the investigation, adult users sent sexual messages to New York investigators posing as adolescents on the site.

The deal with Facebook was billed as a "new model," but Connecticut's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, said yesterday's agreement with MySpace — the culmination of two years of a joint effort by state attorneys general from across the country, including Mr. Cuomo — has gone even further.

As a part of the deal, MySpace has agreed to set up an industry task force to work on adopting and developing new technology to verify the age of its users. The company, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., also agreed to keep a list of pornographic Web sites in order to sever links between MySpace pages and those sites and to respond more quickly to complaints.

"Myspace is taking the lead with this agreement to a set of principles that can help establish an industry gold standard. We will be actively and directly contacting Facebook seeking to persuade them to join," Mr. Blumenthal said.

Mr. Cuomo's chief of staff, Steven Cohen, said he was pleased with the MySpace arrangement, noting that it incorporated some portions of the Facebook deal.