Website MySpace is moving to protect teenagers from cyber-savvy paedophiles by developing software that allows parents to track their children's movements on the internet.
Called Zephyr, the software will let parents find out what name, age and location their children use to represent themselves on MySpace.
Adults will not be able to read children's email or access their profile, but they will be able to see the level of interaction they open themselves to.
The program would also alert parents if the child's profile was changed from another computer. MySpace faces increasing pressure from government groups in the United States worried that children are at risk from sexual predators.
Teens who register their age as 14 (the minimum age) or 15 are currently given private profiles that cannot be searched by people over 18.
The problem is that there is no verification process. Children could claim they were older or an adult could claim to be younger, without contest.
Although the level of parental control established by the software is relatively low, a MySpace spokeswoman said the software would work best as a tool to open discussions about a child's behaviour and safety.
The executive director of internet safety group Netsafe, Martin Cocker, said it was good to see sites attempting to be responsible, but it was not a "cure-all".
"One of the fears is that parents will rely on this technology to protect children. Realistically, with new technology, (children) just find ways to work around it," he said.
Cocker said computer paedophilia was a rising problem in New Zealand but it was "hard to get a handle on the size of it".
Cocker said that from interviews his organisation had conducted, teenagers appeared to come into contact with "unsavoury adults" fairly regularly, but most were capable of handling the situation themselves.
One Christchurch 17-year-old girl labelled the site "a catalogue for paedophiles" but thought the tracking software would be "an invasion of privacy".
Joanna Boyd, 16, said the fears of coming into contact with predatory adults were over-emphasised.
She said she checked her profile every day and had never been contacted by a strange adult.
MySpace is a fast-growing website, with about 150 million profiles. Half of all U.S. teenagers access such websites like MySpace with one goal – to make friends.

Internet social gathering website MySpace will start sending online alerts to Internet users in certain regions of the United States in order to help find missing children. 

MySpace established a partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in order to enable AMBER Alert. This is a program that provides an early warning broadcast bulletin in cases of earnest child abduction. 

A week ago, families of five teenagers who were sexually abused by adult users from MySpace sued the website, stating that it showed negligence concerning its users' protection. 

In 2006, the company hired a former prosecutor from the United States Justice Department in order to improve its online safety program. The representatives from MySpace stated that the AMBER alerts will appear in a little text box, which will be situated at the top of a profile. The website's users will be able to get additional information regarding the case, which will include photos and information about suspects.

In a phone interview, the CEO of MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, stated that the company has been working with partners and law enforcement in order to find all the possible ways to protect children and keep sex offenders away from the website. He also mentioned that MySpace will provide technology that will benefit the whole industry.

MySpace is a fast-growing website, with about 150 million profiles. Half of all U.S. teenagers access such websites like MySpace with one goal – to make friends. This survey was made by Pew.

As part of its safety program, the website now asks all its users to have a valid e-mail address. This will allow tracking down possible predators. New subscribers will get a verification e-mail with a link which the user must click to verify his or her identity. 

MySpace made a deal with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. to create a new technology, called Sentinel Safe. The technology will allow MySpace to search proposed state and federal databases of sex offenders' e-mail addresses, enabling the company to delete the profiles of sex offenders who register with a "blacklisted" e-mail address.

MySpace is also developing new software called Zephyr to show parents what information can be publicly seen about their child on the child's profile.  However, the adults using this software will not be able to read the e-mails sent to their child or edit their child's profile.