RALEIGH, N.C. — When Allison Lavelle set up her profile on MySpace.com, most of the people in her life knew about it. There was one significant exception: her mother. The 11-year-old wanted it that way.

She felt fairly Internet-savvy, aware that she shouldn’t post private information online. She was careful to let only approved “friends” view her profile. She knew the social-networking site was open only to people 14 and up, but dodged that by lying about her birth year.

She also lied to her mother when Rhonda Lavelle asked her daughter if she was using the site.

“I thought it was just a cool way to hang out with my friends or someone if I wasn’t really with them,” Allison said. “All my friends had them, and I didn’t see — to begin with — what would be dangerous about it.”

The ease with which Lavelle conned her mother and slipped past MySpace’s own rules alarms North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper. Along with several of his fellow attorneys general and a gaggle of lawmakers in the nation’s statehouses, he’s turned the potential dangers of the popular social-networking Web site into something of a crusade.

“We’ve documented over 100 incidences where predators have physically exploited children after luring them through MySpace — MySpace alone,” Cooper said. “These are the ones that have been caught and reported. ... We think this number is much higher, and clearly there are other social-networking sites out there where this is going on.”

But both online security experts and First Amendment lawyers question the value of targeting MySpace and other social-networking sites. There are better places to hunt for sexual predators, they argue, than a legally operated business that has rights, too.

“It just doesn’t make any sense to me why we’ve chosen the online forum as the whipping boy when in reality there are so many other things going on,” said Jeff Schmidt, head of the Internet security firm Authis Inc. “The answer is: It’s political.”

MySpace is certainly a popular target for Cooper, whose office has prepared booklets, videos and other material for parents and teachers on safe Internet use. While he insists that “parental education” is the best safety feature of the Internet, he believes it must be backed with strong law enforcement.

In May, he led a charge of eight state attorneys general who successfully pressed the company to provide the names of registered sex offenders it had found among its members. At the same time, he’s pushing lawmakers in Raleigh to start regulating MySpace and other social-networking sites.

“What we want to do is set an industry standard on the Internet of taking steps to protect children,” Cooper said. “We want … companies, as they approach the Internet, if they’re dealing with children, to look at how they can protect them in the best way.”

North Carolina is among more than a dozen states where lawmakers have passed or are considering a law requiring registered sex offenders to provide authorities with their e-mail addresses and all online identifiers, such as instant messaging names. While MySpace officials declined to comment for this story, company spokespeople have said in the past that MySpace supports such legislation.

“Our laws need to change with the times,” said Hemanshu Nigam, the company’s chief security officer, at the Connecticut Statehouse in May. “We can no longer unwittingly provide an advantage to predators online.”

Cooper also wants lawmakers to require that minors receive parental permission before creating social-networking profiles, and require that Web sites create procedures under which the parents’ identity and age could be verified. Schmidt is wary of such a proposal, because he believes it creates a greater danger of “verified predators.”

“The bad guys who are adults and who can be verified as adults are going to invent and subscribe their own ‘kids,’” he said. “You’re going to end up with less safety than if we had just said, ‘Be careful.’ You’re going to wind up with little Sally who is really a 52-year-old sicko, but he’s got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”

Raleigh lawyer Hugh Stevens, who specializes in communications and First Amendment issues, said such access restrictions must also pass constitutional muster. He compared social-networking sites, like chat rooms before them, to an ice cream parlor or other bricks-and-mortar business where children and teens like to hang out.

“In theory, this is like a rule where the government might come in and say, ‘Well, we think sexual predators might hang around this store so you can’t go there and buy ice cream without a note from your parents,’” Stevens said.

The teens have a right to social discourse, and the store owner has a right to make money, he said, and the government can’t interfere with these rights without a compelling reason and an effective solution.

“At some point, parents have to assume some responsibility and young people have to learn to be responsible for themselves,” he said.

Most are, according to research conducted at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which found that two-thirds of teens with blogs or social-networking profiles somehow restricted access to the sites. Less than a third used their last names or included e-mail addresses.

But Cooper argues those statistics are deceiving. The Pew study also found that 79% of the teens with blogs or social-networking sites included photos of themselves, with girls more likely to do so. Eighty-two percent used their first names, and half identified their schools.

“The problem is, particularly with young children, they are smart enough to navigate the Internet but not necessarily wise enough to make the best decisions when they get there,” he said.

Educating children about their online behavior — and adults, too, who are at risk of identity theft — is key to assuring their safety, said Michelle Collins, director of the exploited child unit for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. But she said there is still an obligation for government — as well as teachers and online providers — to do whatever works to help protect young people on the Web.

“I think the Internet providers have a responsibility to make sure their programs are as safe as possible,” she said. “I think parents have a responsibility to know what their kids are doing online. ... I think there’s enough responsibility there to go around. Everyone has to play their part.”