A recent investigation by Wired News found more than 700 registered sex offenders have profiles on the social networking site MySpace.com.

Kevin Poulsen, a reporter for Wired News, said he conducted the investigation over a period of four months, during which he found that 744 registered sex offenders in the U.S. Department of Justice National Sex Offender Public Registry have profiles on the Web site.

Poulsen said he conducted the study after a Wired News freelancer wrote a story discovering seven MySpace profiles of registered sex offenders after typing in names from California's sex offender registry.

"[The story] begged a follow-up story that took a more detailed approach," Poulsen said.

MySpace, which launched in January 2004, currently has 125 million member profiles, said Taylor Patterson, MySpace communications coordinator.

"Its basically just a site that was created to allow a connected community of online users," she said.

Patterson said 86 percent of MySpace users are over the age of 18, but she did not have statistics on how many of those are college students.

Poulsen said he had to comb through about one-third of the profiles to verify that the information in the profile matched that of the sex offender's information in the sex offender registry.

Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for Fox Interactive Media and MySpace, made a public statement in response to the investigation.

"We are committed to keeping sex offenders off MySpace and are evaluating all functional and scalable solutions," he said in the statement. "In the meantime, we will delete profiles of any convicted sex offenders we find on MySpace."

According to the Pennsylvania Megan's Law Web site, there are 31 registered sex offenders in State College and three in University Park. It also lists 12 sexually violent predators in Centre County. It is unknown if any locally registered sex offenders have profiles on MySpace.

Centre County Assistant District Attorney Lance Marshall said those classified as sex offenders must register with their local police department once every year and sexually violent predators must register every three months under Megan's Law.

"The community is notified that there is a sexually violent predator living among them," Marshall said. He said counseling is also required for the rest of the predator's life.

Marshall said he usually deals with anywhere from five to 10 cases of stalking through the Internet each year.

"Usually, there is some sort of unwanted e-mail included," Marshall said.

Ashley Nesby (senior-journalism), a MySpace user, said she was stalked by a man who sent her unwanted pictures of himself after obtaining her information on MySpace.

Nesby said she blocked him, but he continued to stalk her under different user names. Nesby said he eventually stopped.

"That was an experience I definitely don't wish to be involved in again," Nesby said.

University Police Assistant Director Tyrone Parham said he isn't aware of any harassment cases that the police have dealt with regarding MySpace.

However, he does caution against people putting too much personal information in their online profiles.

"You never know who you're communicating with," Parham said. "The Web sites are public, so whatever you put in there, people can see it," he said.