I signed up for it when I received an email from SBC/Yahoo DSL (to which I'm subscribed) a couple of weeks ago. I just received an alert letting me know that an SO was moving into my neighborhood.
You guys, especially parents, might want to give it a try. You can select other alerts as well.
TexasStooge wrote:Web site sends sex-offender alerts
By BERT LOZANO / WFAA ABC 8
DALLAS, Texas - North Texas is home to tens of thousands of sex offenders.
There are over 4,000 in Dallas County alone; Tarrant County has about 2,300 and Collin County has nearly 400.
However, the government has had statistics on those offenders on the web for a while, and now a new system helps you track them through your cell phone or e-mail.
Julie Bagley has a new baby girl, and recent child molestation cases in Florida concerned her.
"A couple of the neighbors have been talking about looking up all the sex offenders living within a five-mile radius of our home," Bagley said. "We've actually gone online and done that."
What she and her neighbors discovered surrounding their homes surprised them.
"The scariest thing is that there were several in the area that had molested children under the age of five," she said. "I have two children under the age of three."
The public can track registered offenders through a web site run by the Department of Public Safety. And now, a website run by Texas-based "Scan USA" sends e-mails and text messages on cell phones to alert the public about the movement of sex offenders by zip code.
"We track new addresses, changes in zip codes, new registrants to that system, and in a proactive way we broadcast that information to local users," said Ray Krauss of ScanUSA.
The e-mail sends users to a DPS web site, containing information on the location of sex offenders.
"I would love to be aware of anybody that is moving into the neighborhood who has been charged in a sex crime, just for the extra precaution," Bagley said.
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Click here for official site.
