Be very cautious -- sex offenders are creeping up in every corner in the social networking world, which is no surprise.  However, when you hear a number like 29,000 sex offenders registered on MySpace it makes you want to cringe. 

MySpace said the 29,000 names have been deleted from its servers. "We're pleased that we've successfully identified and removed registered sex offenders from our site and hope that other social-networking sites follow our lead," said Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam.

The number of sex offenders that had been on MySpace figures to boost identity-verification advocates who have been arguing for age- and identity-verification requirements for social-networking sites.

"On the most basic level, this is horrifying," said John Aristotle Phillips, CEO of Aristotle, a technology consulting firm that has developed age-verification for sites including Anheuser-Busch's pioneering Bud.TV. "You have 29,000 convicted sex offenders milling around with kids on a website, and it's just the tip of the iceberg because these are just the people who were stupid enough to use their real names."

MySpace has argued in the past that age verification is ineffective.