You know your child has a MySpace account but chances are youve never seen it. Unless your child is under 16 and says they are when they sign up for their MySpace account, their MySpace profile is open to the public and can be viewed by searching for it.

There are several ways to find and view your childs profile or space. Listed below are five search methods.

Way 1: Ask them to show it to you

Dont be surprised if their face pales and they try to find a way to avoid showing it to you. The Internet is broken, MySpace is down, Im too busy doing homework.

Way 2: Google Search

Go to google.com and search for your childs name. Chances are they did not use their name, so you will need to search for their MySpace display name (if you know it), email name, friends, clubs or something else they may have written about in their space.

Give it a try although you may end up with thousands of links to wade through.

Way 3: Browse MySpace

Go to myspace.com and click on the Browse button to view profiles. There are currently over 64 million profiles. In the Basic browse option, you can narrow your search by choosing an age range, marital status, why you are there, country or postal code. The advanced tab provides other choices. The most important choice, searching by Keywords or Names is not available here.

Way 4: Browse MySpace Groups

Go to myspace.com and click on the Groups button to view various groups. Here you can search by keyword or category, but the caveat is that your child must be a member of a group to show up.

Way 5: Use the MySpace Search feature.

Go to myspace.com and click on the Search button. This feature allows you to search by keywords, names, email, display names, schools, organizations or affiliations. You can also narrow your search by the same limits in the Browse section. Unfortunately, MySpace wont give you the results unless you are a member. So the answer to that is to create a dummy (empty) account. Heres how to sign up and keep your identity a secret:

There are 3 steps to creating a dummy MySpace account: You can view step-by-step videos on how to setup a MySpace account here:

First: Set up a dummy Hotmail account.

Why? That way you have a separate account to confirm your MySpace account information. You also do not want any MySpace email to mix with your personal or business email.

Second: Set up a MySpace account.

You will need the email account first, so make sure it is set up. Next, click on the step-by-step video link above for detailed instructions.

Third: Use the MySpace Search Feature.

Once you have access, you can search MySpace without restriction. In order to search for your child's profile, you may need to get creative. Many kids do not put both their first and last names in their "space." So you may need to search for those things that are special to your child, such as a pet's name, a band, a type of sport, their friend's name, etc. If you find a friends name, you can go through their site to find your childs site.

Did you find your childs profile? Need to get it shut down?

Visit http://www.ParentSmartz.com to find out how.

Rhonda Goetz

Rhonda Goetz is an author, speaker, an educator, instructional designer, and owner of Chrome Zebra, Inc, an online training course company and ParentSmartz, a parent's child safety site.

She combines the best of business knowledge and learning design principles to create interactive, engaging online courses that positively impact the bottom line and employee moral.

She is an authorized sexual harassment and discrimination prevention trainer and college instructor.

Her online courses provide businesses with an alternate training method that saves time and money. Employees train at their desks or workstations, and can train anytime. Businesses no longer have to lose production time to large training seminars, or hire expensive consultants or be locked into a set training schedule.

She also designs easy-to-use online safety courses designed to empower parents by teaching them to monitor their child's activities, improve their Internet literacy, and better understand the Internet perils their child deals with every day.

Contact Rhonda at 866.241.9927 for more information.