Facebook Predators

When Facebook.com decided to open its site up to more than just college students, you can guess the concerns that came along with it. Whereas before, only college students with valid emails ending in .edu could register, today there are over 42 million users – of all ages.

The problems that came along with making Facebook available to more people, is the issue of safety. Facebook claims that it takes the content of the site very seriously, and will not tolerate anything explicit or obscene. However, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating to see if privacy controls actually keep younger users safe.

The attorney general’s office created its own Facebook profiles of fictitious 24-year-olds and sent inappropriate requests for nude photos.

Another investigator then posed as a parent of a child that received the request and sent the content and a message to Facebook’s executives stating that it is misleading to represent the site as safe.

The attorney general’s office says they are concerned. After an entire month, a response or action from Facebook execs has yet to be received.

I think that Facebook’s safety controls can be useful, if set up properly. There are a number of different measures that you, or any parent, can take to ensure safety. If they wish, users even have the option of making their entire profile hidden from everyone but their friends.

However, I do think that Cuomo’s investigation has found an issue with the Facebook monitors. Whatever or whomever is supposed to be controlling the information on the site and making sure that it does not violate Facebook’s code of conduct, doesn’t sound like they are doing their job. This should be of major concern to users because the people who should be policing the site are on a 24 hour break, which means no one is making sure that whatever cyberpredators are out there, stay out.

Personally, I don’t feel threatened or worried about the issue. This could be because I live an extremely sheltered life and I don’t think that people could actually be stalking me. Or, it could be because I am responsible enough to know what is okay, what is not okay, and how to protect myself when it comes to networking sites.

This post is in response to an article found at http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/news/2007/2007-09-27-segal.htm