NEW YORK (AP) -- Thirteen social networking sites including those owned by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have agreed to use New York state's list of registered sex offenders to purge rapists and molesters from their sites, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday.
The agreement comes a week after social networking giants Facebook and MySpace agreed to check New York's list of sex offenders against their memberships.
"It is no secret that sexual predators abuse social networking Web sites to find and manipulate victims and to insinuate themselves into their victims' lives," Cuomo said.
New York's law requires sex offenders to register their e-mail accounts, screen names and any other Internet identifiers with the state. Half the states have similar laws.
Cuomo said Facebook and MySpace have so far removed more than 3,500 sex offenders from their sites.
"It was startling to us and frightening to us that 3,500 registered sex offenders were on MySpace or Facebook," he said.
Cuomo said other sites including Friendster have not agreed to check New York's sex offender list against their memberships.
"There is no reason for them not to do this," Cuomo said. "This is a minimum of effort for a maximum of benefit."
Friendster representatives did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment.
Alan Citron, the president of Hollywood, Calif.-based Buzz Media, whose Buzznet.com site was listed by Cuomo as not having agreed to purge sex offenders, said, "We're looking into the regulations and we intend to comply."
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