AG announces
internet-safety plan
Aims to ease
reporting abuses, increase results
By JONATHAN TAMARI,
Home News Tribune Online, October 1, 2007
TRENTON, Sept. 28 — In an
effort to make popular social-networking Web sites safer, Attorney General Anne
Milgram announced a plan Thursday aimed at making it easier to report abuses on
the sites and follow up on complaints.
Milgram said the new reporting standards, which six Web sites agreed to adopt,
although not the two largest ones, will improve on existing sites where
complaint forms are hard to find and don't always lead to results.
The new feature will include a prominent "Report Abuse!" icon, including an
exclamation point in a red circle, which will give users a standard form to
report concerns such as suspected child predators or violent or sexually
explicit material. Anyone who files a complaint will receive a
confirmation number and contact information they can use to follow up on their
report.
"Although this may sound like common sense to you, this really is
revolutionary," Milgram said. "What we're doing here is replacing very
hard to find links with a meaningful, easily identifiable icon that we hope will
become something like a stop sign."
Milgram invited 12 other Web sites and the attorneys general in all 50 states to
join in pushing the reforms that she hopes will sweep the growing industry.
The six Web sites that have signed on so far —
myyearbook.com and five
niche sites owned by Community Connect Inc. — have a combined 22.5 million
members.
By comparison, the two largest social-networking sites, Facebook and MySpace,
boast more than 150 million members combined.
Milgram said the state had reached out to both sites.
Neither Web site's press representatives returned calls for this story Thursday,
but Internet safety expert Parry Aftab said most major sites, including MySpace
and Facebook, already have effective tools for reporting abuse.
"This program I don't think will be effective with the big sites that are
established and effective. ... They already have very extensive procedures,"
said Aftab, an attorney who runs the Bergen County-based Internet-safety group
WiredSafety.
But she said New Jersey's plan will help smaller Web sites that do not have
fully-developed programs to deal with abuses and praised Milgram for her
leadership on the issue.
"Especially for sites that don't have a great deal of experience in this area, I
think this is a great way to get started," Aftab said.
Milgram said state investigators found that on many Web sites the complaint
links were difficult to find and there was no way to find out if reported abuses
led to corrective action.
The Web sites themselves will be charged with deciding how to respond to the
complaints, and each will be able to enforce its own standards, within the law.
Several state attorneys general have recently put a new focus on the safety of
social-networking sites. New Jersey recently found 268 convicted sexual
offenders on MySpace, and it has asked other sites to run similar checks.
Milgram said the state will subpoena Facebook for similar information this week.
jtamari@gannett.com
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