Senators John McCain and Charles E Schumer want to make the internet safer for children by protecting them from convicted sex offenders trying to gain access to social networking sites.

The bill, which will most probably be introduced to Congress in January, would require convicted sex offenders to register their email address with their parole officers.

If they are then caught using an unregistered email address, they could face a return to jail as they would be in violation of probation or parole terms.

The email addresses on file could then be used to reference those used on social networking sites like MySpace.

Arguably the most popular social networking site in the world, MySpace just this week announced it is putting into place a system to reference data on convicted six offenders with its member profiles.

"This legislation combined with our announcement earlier this week of plans to build the first real-time searchable national sex offender database will make the Internet a far safer place for all", said Hemanshu Nigan, MySpace's Chief Security Officer.