UPDATE: The Attorneys General for eight states told MySpace on Monday to turn over any information revealed through the company's efforts to create data-mining technology to pinpoint sexual offenders using the social-networking site .

In a letter to MySpace sent on Monday, the top prosecutors for the states of Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania claimed that they had information suggesting the system for matching MySpace profiles to sexual offender information has turned up thousands of matches.

"Perhaps thousands more sexual predators -- not registered or using fictitious names -- are lurking on your Web site," the prosecutors stated in the letter. "We remain concerned about the design of your site, the failure to require parental permission, and the lack of safeguards necessary to protect our children."

The request is the latest to spotlight MySpace's attempt to keep out individuals that could potentially pose a threat to minors that use the site. Last December, the social networking site announced that it would team with Sentinel Tech Holding, a database and background-check company, to create a technology that could match people on various states' sexual offender lists to their MySpace profiles. In October, Wired senior editor Kevin Poulsen, the former news editor for SecurityFocus, revealed that simple matching of names turned up 744 MySpace members confirmed to be on states' sexual offenders list.

MySpace did not comment specifically on whether it would meet the Attorneys General's request but did provide a general status update on the data-mining system.

"We are in the initial stages of cross referencing our membership against Sentinel’s registered sex offender database and removing any confirmed matches," Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace said in a statement e-mailed to SecurityFocus. "Mandatory sex offender email registration legislation -- which is now being considered at the federal level and in several states, and is supported by leading experts -- would significantly expedite this process and help keep sex offenders off our sites."

MySpace hired Nigam a year ago to head its cybersecurity team and beef up the site's security against online predators and vandals.

The Attorneys General requested that MySpace respond by May 29.

UPDATE: The article was updated with a comment sent by MySpace to SecurityFocus.