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Tuesday, December 19, 2006 

MySpace-watch: The disappearing profile mystery.

Tom Stephens MySpace page before it was deleted, taken from the Google archive.

The decision to remove the first man arrested in connection with the Suffolk murders MySpace page is curious, to say the least. While it remained up until at least late last night, it's since disappeared, to be replaced with MySpace's generic 404 page.

The Scum, which ought to know why it's gone missing, as both are a part of Murdoch's empire, suggests:

Stephens, a Tesco trolley attendant, kept a profile page on the website myspace.com. On it, he called himself The Bishop after a cartoon character and listed his interests as keep fit and 80s music. He said he was 5ft 11ins and athletic.

The page and his entry on Friends Reunited were last night deleted after hate messages poured in.

Which is disingenuous at best. As any fule no, you can only leave a message on someone's MySpace page if they've got you in their friend list. This wouldn't have stopped private messages from flooding in, obviously, but if MySpace knew this was happening, as it apparently did, it could have deleted them without deleting the actual page.

Stranger still is that MySpace doesn't even delete pages if the person who created it dies. Mydeathspace.com has been chronicling those who have died for a while now. Most of the pages turn into tributes to the person, which is one reason why they aren't disposed of.

One can then only assume that MySpace/the Murdoch empire was embarrassed by the revelation that a suspect in the Suffolk prostitute murders inquiry had a profile on their site from hell, which doesn't bode well for the future independence of the site.

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