The sexual-predators-on-MySpace shocker has taken a further twist as the social networking site's administrators have now removed and blocked a "few thousand" profiles of suspected sex offenders but has refused to give the names and contact details of the alleged predators using the site to the US Attorney General's office.

To handover the information that the authorities have demanded apparently breaks both state and federal laws, but in statement emailed to the press, MySpace stated, "We are doing everything short of breaking the law to ensure that the information about these predators gets to proper authorities".

Over the last 12 days MySpace has been running special software that can identify and remove sex offenders and has been steadily working its way through MySpace's 170 million plus users, resulting in the recently revealed profile cull.

Several lawsuits filed against MySpace earlier in the year for alleged incidents of sexual assault between site users was what originally prompted this investigation, which has become somewhat of a media frenzy in the States.