Social-networking site MySpace.com announced Tuesday that it had removed the profiles of thousands of convicted sex offenders from its website. According to MySpace’s statement, the removal of those profiles is a part of a programme to protect its young members from adult predators.

The announcement was made shortly after after eight US attorneys general demanded that the company hand over information about offenders from among MySpace's 175 million profiles.

In a letter, the attorneys general asked MySpace to provide information on how many registered sex offenders are using the site, and where they live. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper signed the letter, along with attorneys general from Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

MySpace, which is owned by News Corp, said it would not hand over the required information without a search warrant since that would violate the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

"We are doing everything short of breaking the law to ensure that the information about these predators gets to the proper authorities," security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in the news release.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act says certain legal processes - such as a subpoena - must be used to get certain personal information from Web sites.

"We're truly disheartened that the AGs chose to send out a letter ... when there was an existing legal process that could have been followed," the security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in an interview.

But Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said no subpoena is needed for MySpace to tell the attorneys general how many registered sex offenders use the site "or other information relating to possible parole violations."

"I am deeply disappointed and troubled by this unreasonable and unfounded rejection of our request for critical information about convicted sex offenders whose profiles are on MySpace," Blumenthal said. "By refusing this information, MySpace is precluding effective enforcement of parole and probation restrictions that safeguard society."

In January MySpace said it will donate a national computer database on U.S. sex offenders to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. MySpace and background verification company Sentinel Tech Holdings Corp. developed a technology that combines close to 50 U.S. state registries, aiming to help police keep track of an estimated 600,000 convicted sex offenders.

In January, the families of five girls abducted by adults they met on MySpace sued the company for negligence.