Internet Security

Facebook Agrees to Protect Young Customers

To prove people are as old as they say they are on the service, the company is developing behavioral technology to weed out the fibbers, says Chris Kelly, Facebook's privacy czar. Such technology could, for example, identify when someone is friends with people of a significantly different age - an indication something is amiss


By BRAD STONE
Story from The New York Times


Following MySpace out of the penalty box of 50 state attorneys general, the social network Facebook is agreeing to a broad set of principles to protect young users from predators and inappropriate material.

The company will now require users under 18 to affirm they have read Facebook's safety tips when they sign up; it will also more prominently offer safety tips and an unsubtle "report abuse" icon, devised by the New Jersey Attorney General.

Facebook will also no longer let people change their ages from over 18 to under 18 without review and have agreed to take down within 24 hours any material flagged as inappropriate.

To prove people are as old as they say they are on the service, the company is developing behavioral technology to weed out the fibbers, says Chris Kelly, Facebook's privacy czar. Such technology could, for example, identify when someone is friends with people of a significantly different age - an indication something is amiss.

MySpace announced a similar settlement with state officials in January and joined a new Internet safety technical task force to develop age and identity verification tools for social networking sites. Facebook will now join that task force as well.

In discussions with Facebook over the past year, the attorneys generals were led by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who said in an interview that there were a smaller number of problems with more privacy-oriented Facebook than with the more open and widely used MySpace.

He also said Facebook is not totally out of the doghouse yet. "We envision this as an ongoing process. We purposely built into this agreement the opportunity to raise and address new issues," Mr. Blumenthal said. "If we see a problem they'll hear from us."


(Published: 10.05.2008.)

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