MySpace has gotten quite a bad reputation. It was put off as a "dates-r-us" for pedophiles at one point, at another it was seen as a distraction to minors, but now it seems like MySpace got a crown for the pile of dirt on their doorstep. Police departments all around America are confirming that criminal gangs (mostly local) are recruiting on social networking sites, especially MySpace. What's worse still is that gang fights will start on the internet, and then people will take them to the street. Some gangs will even post a form of propaganda, just for the purpose of getting children to join their gangs. In response to this story, some social networking sites have already declared that anything illegal or gang-related is immediately deleted and cause for an on-the-spot ban.

MySpace ads have been taking a very interesting turn as of late. Ads for WinAntiVirus Pro and DriveCleaner are taking a new approach to getting people to buy things. Symantec and Sophos have warned that both programs are malicious, which raises questions as to why MySpace allows ads for them in the first place. WinAntiVirus Pro tries to install itself in the background via ActiveX. When it is installed, it claims you have a malware problem and makes you buy the anti-virus program it recommends. DiskCleaner pulls a similar stunt, however it claims there is a problem with your computer before it installs itself and demands you buy the professional version.

Four angry families are suing MySpace, because all of them have one thing in common. All four families have a daughter that's been sexually assaulted by a guy they've met on MySpace, and been seduced into meeting. Two law firms, Barry & Loewy of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin of Houston, says the familes are filing separate suits in the Los Angeles Superior court. MySpace is being accused of being negligent, reckless, fraudulent and misrepresenting itself. MySpace wants to point out that Myspace is "an industry leader on Internet safety", and that they make some serious effort to get parents to take responsibility for their kids. The families of the victims are after several million dollars each.

Due to unrelenting pressure from the press, angry parents, and politicians, MySpace is releasing software that will monitor a MySpace user's activities on MySpace. The software, codenamed 'Zephyr', does look a lot like spyware, but will only report MySpace activities to parents, not unlike AOL's Parental Controls. The software would allow parents to see what name, age, and location their children are using on MySpace. 'Zephyr' would run even if the user logged in from a different location, and does not record highly private/sensitive information such as MySpace comments and email. The main reason MySpace is doing this is because a massive amount of USA senators (33) are threatening to take legal action against MySpace if it does not do something to verify the age of it's users. Other popular social networking sites, such as Facebook and Xanga, will not allow anything like 'Zephyr' on their sites, as it is a direct violation of their Terms of Service.

The personal safety of it's users and the protection of multimedia copyrights are the two highest priorities for social networking giant MySpace. And to protect it's users, Myspace has teamed with Sentinel Tech Holding, an expert in background verification, to add a new feature to the website. The feature, called the "Sentinel Safe" profile searcher, will let MySpace easily search and destroy the profiles of registered sex offenders. This is to prevent those same sex offenders from seducing, kidnapping, and molestering MySpace users. MySpace says that there are roughly 550,000 registered sex offenders, all of which need to be kept away from MySpace. Sentinel Safe will be the first service that has access to the sex offender registries of 46 states.