Facebook

Facebook to protect young users

THE social network Facebook has reached an agreement with 49 state attorneys general to institute a broad set of principles intended to protect young users from online predators and inappropriate material.

The company will require users under 18 to confirm they have read Facebook's safety tips when they sign up. The site will also display a prominent 'report abuse' icon devised by the New Jersey attorney general.

Facebook will also no longer let people significantly change their ages without review and has agreed to take down within 24 hours any material flagged as inappropriate.

To obtain proof that people are as old as they say they are on the service, the company is developing behavioural technology to weed out fibbers, said Chris Kelly who work on privacy matters for Facebook.

Such technology could, for example, identify when someone is friends with people of a significantly different age - an indication that perhaps an older person is trying to contact young people.

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.

The North Carolina attorney general, Roy Cooper, and the Connecticut attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, led discussions over the last year.

Richard said in an interview that there were a smaller number of problems with privacy on Facebook than with the more open and widely used MySpace, but that Facebook might have more work to do.

'We envision this as an ongoing process. We purposely built into this agreement the opportunity to raise and address new issues,' Richard said. 'If we see a problem, they'll hear from us.'

The New York Times