DurhamNtx's blog: "Carryover from MS"

Originally posted Tuesday, April 18, 2006 I subscribe to a few web design and development e-zines, including one called SecurityProNews. On Thursday: 04.13.06, they sent the following article by David Utter, which I though would be of interest to most of [MySpace members]. It is reposted by kind permission:

Former Microsoft child-safe computing director and federal prosecutor Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam joined Fox Interactive Media as chief security officer for MySpace. Cleaning up the wilder and sometimes more dangerous side of MySpace has received as much attention as the site itself in recent months. The website booted off some 200,000 profiles it deemed too risqu for continued viewing. Keeping tabs on the growing site became a full-time job, and Ross Levinsohn at Fox Interactive Media must have decided to treat it like that, especially if MySpace is to become the advertising magnet Fox desires. That leads to the announcement out of Fox Interactive Media that they have hired Nigam to take on the role as sheriff for the sometimes rowdy side of MySpace. Nigam takes up his new job on May 1st, and certainly appears to have the background parents want to see in someone focused on child safety online: Nigam, who currently serves as Director of Consumer Security Outreach & Child Safe Computing at the Microsoft Corporation, brings more than 15 years of experience in online safety for private industry and law enforcement, including serving as a Federal prosecutor against Internet child exploitation for the US Department of Justice, an advisor to a Congressional commission on online child safety, and an advisor to the White House on cyberstalking. Nigam's role at Microsoft has been to lead the team within Microsoft's Security Technology Unit responsible for driving consumer security outreach and child safe computing strategies. Nigam oversees outreach and partnership development with government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in online consumer safety and security. It also turns out he played a role in advising the COPA Commission, which advised Congress on the issues addressed by the Child Online Protection Act. COPA gained much more notice in the tech world when the government took Google to court in Gonzales v Google and sought to have them open their databases. Nigam's selection followed another announcement by MySpace and News Corp to help protect the younger audience from online predators. The company partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children on a series of public safety ads to help educate their audience on online safety. MySpace now has in the neighborhood of 66 million users, signing up at a rate of 250,000 a day according to Fox Interactive Media. Many of those users swell in the sweet spot of demographics: young, tech savvy, young, trend-conscious, young, and have money to spend on advertisers. Advertisers have shown great reluctance in seeing their marketing campaigns shares web-based real estate with some of the more daring or offensive content. That prompted MySpace to perform the profile purge mentioned earlier. That purge, the NCMEC sponsorship, and Nigam's appointment all help to improve the safety of MySpace. It also helps to enhance its marketability to skittish ad clients in the Fortune 500 too. About the Author: David Utter is a business and technology writer with WebProNews and SecurityProNews.