Sex offenders on MYSpace

Disturbing news about the popular website MYSpace.com. Tens of thousands of registered sex offenders have been found on the site...which is frequented mostly be teenagers and young adults.

It's a favorite stop in cyber-space...a place to meet new friends, chat, and socialize. But MYSpace.com...has also been a hangout for sexual predators...and the numbers are alarming.

MYSpace once estimated that among its 180-million profiles....lurked seven thousand known sex offenders.  Now, MYSpace has privately told law enforcement authorities the number of sex offenders found on its site was actually four times higher -- more than 29-thousand.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, who revealed the new number, is pushing for a state law that would: ban sex offenders from using social networking sites and require those sites to get a parent's permission before children can post a profile.

"All we're doing is giving parents the right to make a choice as to whether or not their child goes on to one of these websites and talks to millions of people many of whom are proven to be child sex predators,” says Cooper.

While MYSpace will not confirm actual numbers...the website did issue a statement saying:

"..we've successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site."

At the same time a number of states, including Texas continue to move aggressively to roundup sex offenders with online profiles...and alert parents to the cyber danger.

"Parents need to understand there are predators on the internet who are more vicious than those who used to lurk in parks and playgrounds," says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot.

But, there is no real way to know just how big this problem is.  The National Center For Missing And Exploited Children says there are more than 600,000 registered sex offenders in the US and who knows how many have access to Internet sites.