Many teens spend hours on the computer. Facebook, for some, has become a way of life."There are people on it everyday, all day, updating statuses. Every third second sometimes," said student Mark Arnone.
According to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Facebook, MySpace, and more than a dozen other sites have taken advantage of information that has come to New York State through a law called Estop. It requires sex offenders to register their email addressees and internet accounts with the state. The state has turned over that information to those social networking sites, and sex offenders are removed from the sites. To give you an idea, to date, 160 in Erie County, and 75 in Niagara County. The Attorney General is also stressing the importance of being careful online, knowing it is out there.
"I have two high school students at home, two young ladies happen to be my daughters, and they say when I start to talk about this, we know dad, we know. People came into school and talked about it, we know. It is worse than you think," said Cuomo.
Now Cuomo is calling on other other kids websites to do the same thing. Screen their users for sex offenders, because they have already found more than 4000 sex offenders accounts from using EStop information. The Attorney General is also again stressing to students to be very careful.
"Beware. Yes you have to be cynical. Yes you have to be a little skeptical. The people who are out there are very good at coming up with identities, and getting information, making believe they are someone they are not," said Cuomo.
And for the kids who are online a lot, they got Cuomo's message about being careful loud and clear.
"Definitely watch out who I accept as a friend. Who is chatting me. Definitely stuff like that," Arnone added.
WKBW
