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-- Starting next week, MySpace, the popular online hangout, will make it harder for strangers to send messages to younger teenagers.
The site, which has more than 70 million members, has been under pressure because members are frequently subjected to lewd or inappropriate messages and occasionally lured into dangerous real-world encounters.
The site will also stop showing advertisements for certain products--like online dating sites--to those under 18.
News Corp.--the owner of MySpace--has been working to address concerns about the safety of the many teenage users of the site, while not clamping down on the freewheeling and flirtatious interchanges that are the source of its appeal.
Next week, the site will restrict how users older than 18 can contact those aged 14 and 15. Older users sending a message asking to become friends with younger users will have to enter the recipients' actual first and last names or their e-mail addresses, rather than simply their user names.
The new policy still allows people under 18 to send messages to those under 16 without knowing their full names or e-mail addresses.
"A lot of 14- and 15-year-olds are friends in school with 16- and 17-year-olds," said Hemanshu Nigam, the chief security officer of News Corp.'s Internet unit. "We want to balance the openness of our community with the interest of protecting the member." --
