Two Polk County sex offenders were arrested last month for being on social networking sites.

As of Dec. 1, 2008, sex offenders in North Carolina are prohibited from being on any commercial social networking sites, such as the popular sites of Facebook.com and Myspace.com.

The Polk County Sheriffs Office on Nov. 20 arrested Chad Winfield Taylor, 35, of Mill Spring and charged him with six felony counts of sex offender use of a social website.

Det. Tonya Lindsey discovered that Taylor was on networking sites including netvives.com, bebo.com, eons.com, pageflakes.com, Facebook.com and Yahoo instant messenger.

Also arrested was Jeff Walter Edney, 35, of Tryon, who was charged with two felony counts of sex offender use of a social network for being on Facebook and Myspace and one misdemeanor count of failing to provide an online identifier that he was on a social network.

Lindsey says all sex offenders have to sign a form that includes the latest state laws and they were aware of the new law making social networking illegal.

Taylor was given a $5,000 secured bond and Edney a $10,000 secured bond.

Polk County currently has 22 registered sex offenders.