Monday, January 14, 2008
MySpace, State AGs Team On Safety Effort
Los Angeles-based MySpace and the Attorney Generals of a group of 49 states and the District of Columbia said Monday morning that they are developing a set of rules focused on social networking site safety. The rules include guidance on education and tools for parents, a 24-hour hotline for law enforcement, a number of safety features on MySpace, and the creation of an online safety task force for the industry. Among the safety efforts MySpace said it will implement are automatically making the profiles of 14 and 15 year olds private and protecting them from being contact by adults; defaulting the profiles of 16 and 17-year olds to private; reviewing every image and video uploaded to MySpace before posting; and reviewing the content of Groups. The moves come after a string of high visibility law enforcement cases over the last few years focused on use of MySpace by child predators. The security efforts at MySpace are headed by Hemanshu Nigam, who was previously Director of Consumer Security Outreach & Child Safe Computing at Microsoft, and also served as a Federal prosecutor against Internet child exploitation at the US Department of Justice.