“Social networking Web sites, like Myspace and Facebook, have become a tool for criminals and can be very dangerous for children,” Six said. “I’m pleased that Facebook has agreed to take steps to ensure the safety of kids and teens using their site.”
The attorneys general of 49 states and the District of Columbia have been working together to improve social networking safety. The Facebook agreement is similar to an agreement reached with Myspace in January.
MySpace agreed to head a task force, which Facebook has joined, to explore and develop age and identity identification tools for social networking sites.
Changes agreed to by Facebook include providing automatic warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an unknown adult; restricting the ability of users to change their listed ages; acting more aggressively to remove inappropriate content and groups from the site and requiring third party vendors to adhere to Facebook’s safety and privacy guidelines.
Under the changes, the first time a Facebook user wants to change his or her age, website staff will review their profile to determine whether the change is appropriate.
In addition, companies offering Facebook users services will now have to implement and enforce Facebook’s safety and privacy guidelines as well.
Facebook also has agreed to maintain a list of pornographic websites and regularly sever any links to such sites. It will remove groups for incest, pedophilia, cyberbullying and other violations of the site’s terms of services, as well as expel from the site individual violators of those terms.
Facebook also will:
- More prominently display safety tips;
- Require users under 18 to affirm they have read Facebook’s safety tips when they sign up
- Regularly review models for abuse reporting and perform a test using the New Jersey Attorney General’s abuse reporting icon.
Six will continue to work with the multi-state group to improve the safety of all social networking Web sites available to children.
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