MySpace Hires Head Security Officer
- by Shankar Gupta , April 13, 2006
According to a MySpace spokesman, the new security officer, Hemanshu Nigam--previously the director of consumer security outreach and child-safe computing at Microsoft--is consolidating a number of duties previously filled by other managers, including outreach to law enforcement, and overseeing site security and user safety.
The move comes two weeks after Ross Levinson, president of Fox Interactive Media, told an audience at a Bank of America investor conference in New York that the company was in the process of deleting profiles that included "questionable material." By the end of last month, the community site had removed 200,000 profiles, and is reviewing 2 million images a day, although the site includes 66 million profiles in total.
The sometimes racy consumer-generated content on the site is a major barrier for advertisers, according to panelists at a talk in March hosted by the Advertising Research Foundation. David Cohen, executive vice president for Universal McCann Interactive, which represents clients including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, and Wendy's International, said that problematic content abounded on the site. "You only have to look around for five or 10 minutes to find something offensive," he said.
Although the MySpace spokesman would not disclose any specific plans for site security and safety features, he said that one key strategy would be education. MySpace has already launched a series of online public service announcements on its own site as well as other News Corp.-owned properties, which warn users about online sexual predators. "1 in 5 kids online is sexually solicited. Online predators know what they're doing. Do you?" read one of the ads that began running on Monday.
