North Carolina AG Pushes MySpace to Be a Safer Service

In a landmark negotiation with MySpace, the Attorney General from North Carolina has secured agreement to significantly increase consumer’s safety on MySpace. The agreement covers increasing the verification of user’s ages to protect minors, allowing parents & guardians the opportunity to block their children from using the site, making user’s sites private by default for those under 16, and responding in a timely fashion to reports of inappropriate content.

Things to think about when reading this Press Release:

This is a tremendous victory for consumers of all ages, and begins to force Internet companies to step up to their responsibility to create products with basic safety protections in place. Attorney General Roy Cooper deserves applause for driving this initiative and persevering in the defense of consumers.

Support this progress by adding your voice to the demand for responsibility from social networking sites and other internet services. The best way to do this is to vote with your feet and through email. Refuse to use services that do not respect your safety, and/or email companies to let them know of your expectations and you will make a difference. Speak up and do your part.

One voice can be disregarded, thousands of voices drive change.

Linda

AG Cooper announces landmark agreement to protect kids online

Cooper led effort to forge national agreement with MySpace to make social networks safer

New York: In a victory for social networking safety, Attorney General Roy Cooper and 49 other attorneys general today announced that MySpace has agreed to significant steps to better protect children on its web site, including creating a task force to explore and develop age and identity verification technology. “We’re joining forces to find the most effective ways to keep young children off these sites and to protect the kids who do use them,” said Cooper. “This agreement sets a new standard for social networking sites that have been quick to grow but slow to recognize their responsibility to keep kids safe.”

MySpace acknowledged in the agreement the important role of age and identity verification technology in social networking safety and agreed to find and develop on-line identity authentication tools. Cooper and the other attorneys general advocate age and identity verification, calling it vital to better protecting children using social networking sites from online sexual predators and inappropriate material.

Other specific changes and policies that MySpace agreed to develop include: allowing parents to submit their children’s email addresses so MySpace can prevent anyone using those email addresses from setting up profiles, making the default setting “private” for profiles of 16- and 17-year-olds, promising to respond within 72 hours to inappropriate content complaints and committing more staff and/or resources to review and classify photographs and discussion groups.

Cooper commended MySpace for its willingness to make its site safer, calling it an industry leader and urging other social networks to adopt the safety principles in today’s agreement.

The agreement culminates nearly two years of discussions between MySpace and the Attorneys General. The Attorneys General were led by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, co-chairmen of the multistate group’s Executive Committee consisting of Connecticut, North Carolina, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Attorneys General from 49 states and the District of Columbia signed the agreement.

Under the agreement, MySpace, with support from the attorneys general, will create and lead an Internet Safety Technical Task Force to explore and develop age and identity verification tools for social networking web sites.

MySpace will invite other social networking sites, age and identify verification experts, child protection groups and technology companies to participate in the task force.