Japan: Police Remove Messages from Cell Phone Social Networking Sites

According to Japanese daily Yomiuri, police have asked six cell phone social networking sites to delete messages from underage users looking for dates.

The Metropolitan Police Department believes that these messages are similar to those posted on dating service sites and as a result, could lead to criminal activity such as child prostitution. Mixi, one of Japan’s leading mobile social networking sites, has deleted over 330 online communities since March of this year.

According to the Police Department, this is the first time that these types of messages have been deleted, as prior to this instance, they reserved the right to investigate only messages linked to murder or drug trafficking cases.

Although the six social networking services have been used in the past to facilitate crime among their combined 40 million users, these instances are infrequent considering the high amount of usage.