In the last months, I was extremely surprised to see MySpace loading in Spanish, although I am not living in Spain, and my IP doesn't belong to a country where Spanish is at least an officially recognized language. Today, I just had a revelation - I had to scroll down and choose an English-speaking country. So much for my accuracy when checking a Web page, but today news have emerged regarding a really disturbing MySpace-related issue, as well as one less disturbing, but pretty interesting, so let's take them one by one...
Anyway, before moving to the recent events, I should remind you a few nasty things that happened in the past.
First, it was back in May 2006, when two Long Island, New York teenagers, Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli, were charged for unauthorized computer access and attempted extortion of MySpace, after they hacked into the site with the purpose of stealing the personal information of its users. After that, they threatened to share the secrets of their break in,unless MySpace paid them $150,000. Obviously, they both got arrested pretty soon, by undercover police officers posing as MySpace employees.
As a funny side note, multiple schools, and even public libraries, from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Malaysia restricted access to MySpace, considering it "a haven for student gossip and malicious comments."(!!)
The final piece of the past I want to tell you about now happened in April 2007, when police in County Durham, United Kingdom, arrested a girl aged 17 on charges of criminal damage. The reason? A party advertised on MySpace, held at her parents' house without their consent ended up with over 200 teenagers that arrived from across the country, and unleashed hell - £20,000 of damage, from cigarette butts to urine on clothing. They did so much damage, that the girl's parents, who were obviously not able to stop the party, being away at the time of the happening, had to move out of the house!
Now, let's get to the more recent facts, first of them being the conclusion of a very sad MySpace story, which I find pretty disturbing.
A boy and a girl met on MySpace, and they started living that kind of romance you only live once...although it was an online relationship, and they were 16 and 13 years old. After only a month, he said it's all over, and told her the world would be better without her, as closing words. Unfortunately, she hung herself and died, without knowing that the boy's mother has been using her boy's account in those final days...
Now, the 49 years old Lori Drew stands trial in Los Angeles, accused of providing false information to get a MySpace account, as well as violation of MySpace's terms. She could end up with no less than 20 years in prison for the above.
LA FBI Assistant Director Salvador Hernandez said "Whether we characterize this tragic case as 'cyber-bullying,' cyber abuse or illegal computer access, it should serve as a reminder that our children use the Internet for social interaction and that technology has altered the way they conduct their daily activities. As adults, we must be sensitive to the potential dangers posed by the use of the Internet by our children."
Unfortunately, time can't be turned back for one 13 years girl whose mistake was to trust a virtual account, and not trying to contact the person behind it. Well... words are useless now, so let's move to our next subject, the MySpace kings who lost their crowns.
The story is very simple - MySpace just won the largest CAN-SPAM judgment in the US history, after Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, the two "spam kings," failed to show up in court. As soon as these two guys will be tracked down, they may be forced to pay $234 million, for the guild of using MySpace for commercial purposes, trying to make other members hand over usernames and passwords, using automated spamming scripts, and encouraging others to participate in this spamming whirlwind, too.
Although those $234 million may not be ever recovered, this judgement may be enough to scare others and help making MySpace a cleaner and safer place for all. Sounds good to me!
This is it for today, but I would like to challenge you to tell a story related to MySpace. I am sure you must know someone who has some interesting MySpace romance or another interesting story to tell, if you're not the one to have lived such a thing. For now, there are no prizes, but maybe in the future...
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Read more
Latest Comments
Comments (2)
Comments (1)
Comments (2)
Comments (1)
Comments (2)