Convicted sex offenders should not be prevented from using social networking sites such as MySpace, Scotland Yard said yesterday.

The Metropolitan Police was responding to an announcement by MySpace that it had removed 29,000 convicted sex offenders from its user base in America after cross-checking its members against publicly available sex-offender databases.

The force said that it had no plans to share information about sex offenders with sites such as MySpace and Bebo with a view to having the profiles of such people taken down. “Just because you’re a convicted offender doesn’t mean you’re still offending,” a spokeswoman said. “Why would we pursue them in this way? These are people who have served their time.”

Scotland Yard’s position was backed up by the Home Office, which said it was “not intending to disclose lists of registered sex offenders to individuals or organisations not directly at risk or concerned with law enforcement”.

A spokeswoman said that the Government would “continue to work closely with law enforcement agencies, children’s groups and the internet industry to ensure the web is as safe as possible for children,” and that Britain already had “some of the toughest laws in the world to protect children from sexual harm”.

At least a dozen American states have been pressing MySpace, which allows users to upload photographs and music and connect with other users, to release information about the profiles of members who are convicted offenders because of concerns that they may be grooming younger users of the site.

Profiles of more than 29,000 sex offenders have been found on MySpace, lawyers in North Carolina and Connecticut said this week, up from 7,000 two months ago.

MySpace said it was pleased that the offenders had been identified and removed from its database and said that it was working with a technology firm to cross-check profiles on the site against lists of convicted sex offenders.

Scotland Yard said that it used networking sites such as MySpace, which is owned by News Corporation, the parent company of The Times and Times Online, and Bebo to gather evidence against suspected paedophiles and frequently sent covert investigators into such sites “to pose as children and attract offenders”. In the past 18 to 24 months it had secured convictions against ten child abusers based on evidence gathered in this way.

Different laws govern the disclosure of information about sex offenders in the US and Britain. In America, local authorities are obliged to publish the details of such offenders, including their address, which has meant that MySpace has been able to cross-check such information against its database.

Last month the Home Office ruled out introducing similar legislation.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre said that the biggest danger to young people using the internet came from the information they put up about themselves, not from the predators. “We would advise young people only to post pictures that they would be happy for their parents to see,” a spokeswoman said.

Most “grooming” of children did not happen on social networking sites but in other forums to which predators lured them, such as instant messaging or other chatrooms, she said.

CEOP, which works with police to investigate instances of child abuse online, said that parents worried about their children’s use of social networking sites should read their advice website, www.thinkuknow.co.uk.

In a statement, MySpace said: “We are pleased that we have successfully identified and deleted these registered sex offenders and hope that other social networking sites follow our lead.”