Dad sues Facebook after 11-year-old shared photos and messages with men

9-14-15 Global:

The father of a young girl has sued Facebook for failing to enforce its age restriction policy after claiming his daughter was exposed to sexual predators when she signed up for an account at age 11.

The girl, from Northern Ireland and referred to in court documents as GS, signed up for multiple accounts, posted sexual pictures of herself and contacted men on the social network.

One of the men she came into contact with responded with equally inappropriate pictures, despite the existence of a restraining order forbidding him from contacting her.

Even though Facebook later removed the girl's accounts, lawyers for the family argued the social network had been "negligent" in its "duty of care" for her because it had no system in place to prevent underage users from misrepresenting their dates of birth - a situation that allowed her to return to the site multiple times while still under the age of 13.

The father's legal team said the account creation system was not sufficiently robust at the time and could have benefited from even a "simple" age verification system based around the uploading of passports or other official documents. Solicitor Hilary Carmichael said:

My own personal view is that Facebook isn't suitable for under-18s, but the company isn't even able to uphold its own policy of keeping under-13s out. An age check, like asking for a passport number, would be a simple measure for Facebook to implement.

According to the International Business Times, lawyers also argued that an 11-year-old girl is not capable of giving consent to "throw away her privacy rights" under the Data Protection Act 1998.

After four years of legal back and forth, the case was finally due to be heard in a two-week trial scheduled to begin last Monday in the Northern Ireland High Court. That was, as the Daily Mail reports, until the man and Facebook came to an out of court settlement involving an undisclosed payout.

It will be interesting to see if that news now opens the floodgates for more claims against Facebook from parents whose underage children have signed up to the social network and whether other such sites with poorly enforced age restrictions will also be at risk of potential court action.

As for Facebook itself, a spokesman said:

People have to be 13 to sign up to Facebook. When we become aware that someone is under 13 and they have therefore lied about their age, we remove their account.

Regarding this legal case, all the parties are bound by the confidentiality terms – including Facebook.

If you are a parent or guardian with concerns over an underage child accessing Facebook then there are a few options available to you.

The social network itself suggests showing the child how to delete their account, but also offers a form for reporting accounts belonging to anyone under the age of 13. The company says where an account is reported, along with reasonable proof that the user is underage, it will delete the account promptly.

If your child is over the age of 13, gaining access to an account or having it deleted is likely to prove tricky - due to privacy laws - but Facebook does offer this advice: ...Continued... by Lee Munson

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Facebook Reportedly Developing Tech to ‘Friend’ Kids Under 13

6-7-2012 National:

Citing unnamed sources that have spoken with Facebook executives, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the social networking giant is building mechanisms that would connect children’s accounts to their parents’, letting parents decide who their kids can “friend” and what applications they can use. Facebook executives couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the story.

Though Facebook currently boasts about 900 million users across the planet, today it does not grant accounts to anyone under the age of 13. However, the company has no way to verify whether someone is lying about their age.

Facebook earns a huge portion of its revenue from the games that companies like Zynga build atop its platform. Expanding its user base to younger children would widen that potential market.

Not everyone likes that idea.

“What Facebook is proposing is similar to the strategies used by Big Tobacco in appealing to young people – try to hook kids early, build your brand, and you have a customer for life,” said a statement from James Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, an organization known for taking a protective view of children on the internet.

Since Facebook members often enter a great deal of personal information into their profiles, the social network comes under regular fire for its use of the data in targeting advertisements and peeking into what users are up to in their daily lives.

Judging from the Journal’s report, however, the move to allow younger Facebook users is hardly a done deal. Known for its “hacker culture,” Facebook often builds tools and features that aren’t implemented. ..Source.. by Catleb Garling

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Should 11-year-olds join Facebook?

Should young children be able to use Facebook?

And if so, under what conditions?

Those are the questions bloggers and Twitter users are batting around the Internet on Monday following a news report saying Facebook is looking into ways it could let kids under the age of 13 use the site with parental consent.

Currently, Facebook bans children younger than 13.

Data from Microsoft Research and Consumer Reports, however, show that many kids use the site anyway, often with their parents' knowledge. A 2011 Consumer Reports survey found 7.5 million people younger than 13 use the site; nearly a third of 11-year-olds and more than half of 12-year-olds use Facebook with their parents' knowledge, according to a 1,007-person survey supported by Microsoft Research. ..Source.. by John D. Sutter, CNN

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Facebook Building Photo-Sharing App to Rule Them All, Report Says

6-17-2011 National:

Facebook looks set to take on some of the net’s hottest photo sharing services including Instagram, Path and the ridiculously well-funded Color with a new iPhone app, according to a report from Techcrunch.

Techcrunch says it’s gotten hold of 50Mb worth of screenshots and documentation about an upcoming app from Facebook and that it looks “awesome.”

The move isn’t unsurprising since Facebook has become the net’s largest photo sharing site by making it simple for users to upload photos and share them so that friends and family members can comment on them. But early adopters — some five million of them — have embraced Instagram, which lets you take a picture, geo-tag it, enhance it with filter, and share it with followers on the social network as well as a number of third-party services (including Facebook) in seconds.

That popularity may be of concern to Facebook as it seeks to keep as much “social” activity as it can on its own network.

It’s not clear from the few details TechCrunch published Wednesday whether the new app seeks to copy features from Instagram/Path/Color or whether it re-imagines mobile photo sharing. But either way, it’s way too soon to declare the death of any niche app. Facebook has taken on other hot services, such as FourSquare and Quora, with its own versions — Places and Questions, respectively — and neither of those companies died an early death.

That said, it’s got to be scary to be a small but growing service and see screenshots of a competing service offered by a site with a user base closing in on a billion users.

Facebook did not respond immediately to a request for comment. ..Source.. by Ryan Singel, Screenshot courtesy TechCrunch.

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Consumer Reports: Facebook has 7.5 million underage users

5-10-2011 Global:

About 7.5 million active Facebook users are lying about their age -- they're younger than 13. And among those preteens, more than 5 million are under 10, according to a recent Consumer Reports survey.

That violates Facebook's own policy, meant to avoid federal regulations that apply to websites with young members. Those regulations require people who sign up to be 13 or older, the report says.

The minors' accounts "were largely unsupervised by their parents, exposing them to malware or serious threats such as predators and bullies," according to a Consumer Reports statement.

According to the survey, Facebook browsing has exposed more than 5 million American households in the last year to some form of abuse, including viruses and identity theft. About 1 million children faced some sort of cyber-bullying, the survey said.

"Despite Facebook’s age requirements, many kids are using the site who shouldn't be," Consumer Reports technology editor Jeff Fox said in the statement. "What's even more troubling was the finding from our survey that indicated that a majority of parents of kids 10 and under seemed largely unconcerned by their children's use of the site."

In April, Facebook rolled out new security tools aimed at improving how users report bullying, fake profiles and offensive content, in addition to announcing a teacher's guide to the social network.

The social-networking giant also launched a redesign of its online Family Safety Center, which has tips for families, educators and teenagers looking to use Facebook safely. ..Source.. by LA Times

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