MySpace Scams

BY FRANK MAIN

MySpace.com touts itself as “a place for friends.”

But a Naperville teenager discovered the social networking Web site also is a place for sexual predators, authorities said Friday.

Gerald Wheeler, 40, is being held in Salt Lake City on federal charges of using MySpace to coax the 13-year-old girl to engage in sexual conduct.

“This coordinated effort has taken another sexual predator off the street and off line,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said.

In July, the girl’s father contacted Naperville police and reported his daughter received obscene messages on her MySpace site and her Tagged.com account from people calling themselves Mike and Brian, authorities said.

The messages allegedly asked her to fly to New York to enter a modeling contract in exchange for engaging in sexual conduct.

With the help of her father, police found photos of the girl in sexual poses, authorities said.

Computer messages traced

Investigators traced the computer messages to an Internet cafe and gaming facility in Salt Lake City. The owner said Wheeler was a manager and the only one with access to the computer at the time the girl was contacted.

A cell phone number for “Brian” belonged to a former employee who was close to Wheeler, authorities said.

Wheeler was convicted in 1994 in Utah of attempted forcible sex abuse, a felony, and was placed on the state’s sex offender registry, records show.

“Wheeler is a prime example of why parents need to educate themselves on the Internet and pay close attention to their children’s activity while online,” Naperville police Sgt. Bill Davis said.

Kids used to hang out in vacant lots, then in malls and now, online.

BeNetSafe helps you to be a better parent by lovingly and effectively “chaperoning” your children online, just as you always have, offline.

BeNetSafe will monitor your child’s information on the Internet and provide you with detailed reports and feedback alerting you to potentially dangerous and risky behavior.

This one appears to be the result of a profile hijack. If you find out that your are posting these, change your password immediately.

MySpace has 100 million members, including celebrities and a few fakes, but two Internet sleuths are separating them out. Irish poet Bryant McGill, 36, discovered a MySpace profile for an author he recognized as an impostor, the Wall Street Journal reported.

MySpace rules forbid impostors, but has no verification procedures. Users must only provide an e-mail address, name, gender, birth date and password. McGill and comedian Jim Karol decided to set their own MySpace page called ‘100% Verified Celebs and MySpace Personalities,’ which checks out profiles at no cost.

Individuals can apply to McGill and Karol for a seal of approval. They are then quizzed to see how easily they can answer relevant questions. The duo has verified 167 celebs so far, from actor Gary Busey to Cher, winner of the television reality show, ‘Beauty and the Geek.’ ‘I am getting obsessed with figuring out who is real and who is fake,’ Karol said. Some celebrities don`t worry about impostors. ‘Fan sites help promote the show virally,’ TV talk host Carson Daly said. His official MySpace profile has 29,000 friends.

The above screenshot is the latest in MySpace spam bulletins. These have been appearing more and more. Usually the link you click on is a redirector link to go to an affiliate website. This however is not the worst part about the bulletin post. All of these bulletins are not being posted by your MySpace friends. They are being posted by someone who hijacked their profile.

If you found that you or some of your friends have posted this bulletin, then change your password immediately or message your friends and tell them to change their password immediately as well.

Most likley they were somehow redirected to a MySpace phishing site setup to steal their password. Never enter your password on sites other then MySpace. Some site may be setup to look like MySpace so remember to always check for the MySpace url in the address bar.

I just recieved some more info about the MY SPACE dangers. I found out exactly how thieves are locating houses by using MY SPACE combined with a second awful site.When you sign up for “Your Space” you enter the following information:
Name, Age, City & State, Zodiac Sign, height, build, children’s info, hobbies, marital status and occupation. You may think that this information is innocent but it is not AT ALL.

There is another web site called “zabba.com” this site is a free search engine used to locate addresses & phone numbers (Even Unlisted #’s!) of anybody worldwide! All the person needs is your name. If they can enter your city as well it will help narrow down the amount of people they have to search through. However, since YOU listed your birthdate or age or your zodiac sign on MY SPACE, finding out which “Bob Jones” you are will be a breeze.

Once they have determined your address they cross reference this with your occupation listed on MY SPACE. If you are a “Hot Single, Night Shift Bartender at Lucky’s” they all ready know when you are not going to be home.

Parents are even using MY SPACE as a way to show friends their pictures of their lovely children - BAD IDEA. Any thieves or predators can now stalk your family from the privacy of their own home.
If “Your Space” says you “have two sons - ages 4 and 8 who are honor roll students at Parker Elementary”, this tells thieves that when you are not home, nor are they.
You can even reverse the rolls - parents, your children can say, “My mom works at the dentist office and my dad works at ford”.

Here’s a little more IMPORTANT, IMPORTANT about Zabba.com
whether it is cross referenced with MY SPACE or not, you can use it to find out some ones name, address, phone number, PARENTS NAMES, MOTHERS MAIDEN NAME, GRANDPARENTS ans every place your family has lived. This is very scary. I didn’t believe it. I entered my name and EVERYTHING listed appeared. Even how many criminal violations I have had (traffic tix).

I want to see if there is a way to get removed from the list. I was told that if you sign up for things on the internet you MUST read the fine print before you submit your info. I was told that sites can sell your presoanl information to third parites, zabba.com could easily be buying this info.
If you are interested in seeing EXACTLY what I have been talking about, I went to MY SPACE and found a perfect example of a profile. Here’s the link (Please copy and paste the entire link into your browser.):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=47386876  

******This is 29 year old woman. She innocently posted many pics of her children, husband to be and her self. She EVEN writes: “I spend my weekends watching my kids play soccer, basketball or baseball. I like to talk on the phone to anyone who will listen. I love to lay in bed all day on a Sunday and watch MTV with Mike.”

If anybody has more information about zabba.com or MY SPACE plase send it to me.

HERE’S THE LINK, try it for yourself:
http://www.melissadata.com/cgi-bin/peoplefinder.asp

Myspace.com and other similar web sites have been in the news a lot lately. The reason that they are in the news is because kids get on these web sites and are able to post lots of personal information, and anyone can get access to that information. You may encounter argumentative teens asking, “What is the big deal mom?” or “What is the big deal dad? I’m just putting a little bit of information out there.”

The problem is this. First of all, when kids start to put information on Myspace, they are often doing so with peers standing over their shoulder or in the same room; their friends will encourage them to put more and more information there.

Secondly, teens are at an age where they trust the people that are on the other end of the computer more than they really should. There is some good research that suggests that kids are very trusting of strangers online when there is no good reason for that.

Finally, kids are at an age where they’re willing to take risks. You can talk to them about this, but they don’t see the risk in the same way that you do.

 A 25-year-old man charged with luring a 15-year-old girl over the Internet and then sexually assaulting her was released yesterday after posting $75,000 bail.

Kalani Trujillo was charged with two counts each of first-degree sexual assault and third-degree sexual assault. Trujillo posted bail yesterday and was released from custody, the city prosecutor’s office said.
Trujillo and the girl met on the MySpace.com Web site and struck up a friendship. On July 10, Trujillo picked up the girl near her home and took her to his Salt Lake home, according to an affidavit filed in Honolulu District Court.

Once at his home, the two went into Trujillo’s bedroom and began to kiss, the affidavit said. Trujillo then asked the girl to remove her clothes, which she did, and the two had sex, the affidavit said.
In Hawai’i, it is a criminal offense for anyone to have sex with minors younger than 16 if the accused is more than five years older than the minor and is not married to the minor. In Trujillo’s case, he knew that the girl was 15, the affidavit said.

The girl reported the incident to police and identified Trujillo to police from a photographic lineup, the affidavit said.
On July 28, police with a search warrant went to Trujillo’s home and arrested him. Police said they also seized an unregistered handgun, but he has yet to be charged with that offense, the prosecutor’s office said.