Yep, you[ve probably read about it in a few places already. Actually more than a few as Google blog search indicates that there are 1785 posts about the issue from the past 24 hours at the time I am writing this.
A security company run by a former NYC police officer says that it has found 8,000 sex offenders on Facebook without much effort. The company, which is used by MySpace to police its membership, made the revelations this week in an announcement that Facebook has since responded to.
Here are a couple of quotes I culled from Tech Crunch:
Of the 8,000 matches, Facebook spokesman Barry Schmidt responds:
Obviously, we are going to investigate. We hope to define them and remove them as soon as possible.
He also cautions that these should be viewed as potential matches:
Facebook does not allow the same investigations by an outsider as by insiders. Saying there is a positive match of 8,000 sex offenders is difficult to for an outsider to do. You would need would need more than a name and a photo the size of your thumb. The correct way would be to characterize them as potential matches.
And he says this of Sentinal [sic]:
For a company that has a mission to keep kids safe, we find it irresponsible that they wouldn’t share this with us. Or, if not with us, how about with law enforcement? This could have been an announcement that Sentinel and Facebook removed 8,000 potential sex offenders. We still don’t have the information on who they are. If you are willing to share that with us, we will investigate immediately.
Later, Facebook issued a release saying that they are turning off the accounts associated with IDs of the alleged offenders as a precautionary measure.
Facebook detailed in a press release that they have a number of initiatives designed to protect people from sexual predators.
Whether Sentinel offers a solution that is better than Facebook's homegrown stuff is something I dunno. But this is clearly an issue that is going to get a lot of attention this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Because people have been abusing the comment platform to place phony links to deceptive sites, I am now moderating all comments. If your comment is legit and contains a relevant link, it will be published.