DatingAnyone.com Folds After Receiving MySpace Legal Demand

Posted on June 20, 2006

Jared Chandler, the founder of DatingAnyone.com has closed the MySpace profile tracking website he started after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from MySpace.com's legal department. Jared has also posted the letter on his website along with a personal note.

Myspace has asked that we fold up shop. (I only emailed them 4 times asking them what I should do.) The Cease and Desist letter is below. DatingAnyone.com started back in April 2006 as a cool idea and a challenging development project. I have no doubt that it provided a real service to its users and it's unfortunate that there is no avenue for outside improvement of Myspace.

Last night I was browsing the news and I read another story about harm done to a minor facilitated through contact on Myspace. If there is any area that needs to be addressed, it certainly is this one. Myspace has enjoyed exciting growth in the past year, adding millions of new users. Unfortunately adequate safeguards to verify the age and identity of those using Myspace have yet to be implemented. The only aspect of DatingAnyone.com which ever gave me pause were questions as to the accuracy of Myspace profile ages. I hope Myspace chooses to rise to the challenge of keeping their online community safe for all users, rather than passing the buck and hiding behind a buyer beware legal stance.

There is a lot of pressure on MySpace to provide more security for their users. There is now even legal pressure as a lawsuit was just filed against MySpace by a mother and her 14-year-old daughter. How MySpace.com, or any open social network for that matter, will manage to tighten security while still remaining a popular, open social network is anyone's guess. A few other MySpace dating tools can be found here in an earlier post.