Trenton,
NJ – Attorney General Stuart Rabner
today asked the chief executive officers
of a number of prominent social networking
websites, including MySpace.Com and Friendster.com,
to make it easier for users to identify
and swiftly report inappropriate solicitations
or illegal content.
In
a letter sent today to executives of ten
websites, Rabner asked the companies to
cooperatively work towards making their
services safer for children by creating
the technology to reduce dangers and empower
users without interfering with the free
flow of information.
He
said the companies should work to place
a readily identifiable icon on each page
of their websites that would allow users
to quickly report inappropriate or suspicious
activity such as sexual or predatory content.
Those reports would provide information
to alert both the website and law enforcement
officials of potential criminal behavior.
“This
is about protecting children,’’
Rabner said. He said it would be in the
websites’ best interests to develop
ways to self-police activity on their sites.
“The
use of your service for illegal activity,
and as a medium through which child predators
identify, learn about, and contact potential
victims, poses a serious threat to the public
safety of some of our most vulnerable citizens
and creates significant risk for the positive
reputation and continued operations of your
business,’’ Rabner wrote in
his letter to the website executives. “I
am committed to taking proactive steps to
stop the use of the Internet to commit and
facilitate crime.’’
Rabner’s letter was sent to executives
at MySpace.com; Facebook, Inc.; Friendster;
Xanga.com; LiveJournal.com; Bebo, Inc.;
Tagged, Inc.; BlackPlanet.com; MyYearbook.com;
and TagWorld.
>>
AG
Rabner letter to executives of Web sites
(89k pdf) plugin
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