MySpace donates sex offender database

MySpace is donating their huge database of sex offenders to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The database, which combines nearly 600,000 offenders from state registries of almost all 50 states, could help law enforcement authorities better track sexual criminals.

Typically sexual offenders must register with local law enforcement whenever they move away from and into an area. This information is then combined into a local database that can be searched by police and residents. Back in December, MySpace partnered up with Sentinel to combine all the records, since the local nature of such databases don’t lend well to the global reach of the Internet.

MySpace has used its proprietary database to block and delete accounts of known sex offenders from the website. In addition, the database has helped catch offenders through photo and text recognition.