Social-networking site MySpace began on Monday revealing the identities of convicted sexual offenders on its network to law enforcement agencies after coming to an agreement with top prosecutors that would satisfy legal requirements.

Last week, eight states' attorneys general representing the Multi-State Attorney General Executive Committee requested that the company turn over information on thousands of registered sexual offender that the company found using the site. MySpace declined to provide the information, saying that state and federal privacy laws prevented the company from handing over personal data without a court order. Now, the company has agreed to provide the needed information to the committee.

"There are at least 5,000 registered convicted sex offenders with MySpace profiles posing an immediate, urgent risk to children -- potentially violating their parole and probation, and requiring more vigilant measures," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement. "MySpace has decided to do the right thing, but additional steps are necessary, such as age verification, to protect children from predators on social networking sites."

The eight attorneys general -- from Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- represent a working group of the United States' top prosecutors representing over 40 states, New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte told SecurityFocus. While MySpace has already removed the profiles of sexual offenders from its sites, the attorneys general have called for the company to do more to protect children that use the service.

In December, the social-networking giant, which allows kids as young as 14 years old to register on the site, teamed with background check firm Sentinel Tech Holdings to create a system that would detect registered sexual offenders amongst MySpace members. The system started operations on May 2 and has detected about 7,000 sexual offenders, a MySpace spokesperson told SecurityFocus. The social-networking company has also called for legislation that would require that registered sexual offenders give up any online identities to authorities.

The information gathered by MySpace's system does not include sex offenders that are using aliases on the site.