New Web Icon Helps Kids Fight Online Bad Guys ; N.J. Pushes Safety Feature for Social Networking Sites
By ELISE YOUNG, STAFF WRITER
New Jersey authorities on Thursday introduced a Web page feature Report Abuse! to help youth fend off sex predators, identity thieves and bullies who lurk on social networking sites.
MyYearbook.com and five affiliated sites with a total 24 million registered users agreed to feature the Report Abuse! icon, hire staff to handle reports and, if necessary, pass information to law- enforcement agencies.
New Jersey is the first state to foster such a reporting system, Attorney General Anne Milgram said at a news conference. Her office on Thursday asked attorneys general all over the country to encourage youth sites based in their states to add the icon.
For Web sites, participation would be voluntary. Operators would bear any costs, including the loss of ad space to accommodate the icon. The sites would have to agree to respond to complaints filed by clicking on the icon and completing a form within 24 hours, to advise users to call 911 in instances where suicide or violence is threatened and to report evidence of crime to federal authorities.
“This is a real problem,” Milgram said. “We are bombarded with reports of abusive and predatory behavior on social networking sites.”
Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook.com, said he expects similar Web sites to add the icon.
“I believe it will help encourage reform,” Cook said.
Social Web sites are under increasing legal pressure to keep pornographers, predators and other criminals away from legitimate users, the youngsters whose self-designed pages often include their photos, ages, interests, names of friends and contact information.
MySpace.com, responding to three subpoenas this year from the state Attorney General’s Office, has identified 268 users who were registered sex offenders in New Jersey, Milgram said. In July, MySpace disclosed that it had discovered more than 29,000 sex offenders, from all over the country, with online profiles.
This week, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said his investigators, posing as teenagers, were propositioned and offered pornography by users on Facebook.com. That site’s operator which has been subpoenaed by a group of state attorneys general said it is devising ways to make users safer.
Milgram said her office has been in contact with MySpace and Facebook, but neither has said it would adopt the icon.
Representatives of those sites did not immediately return The Record’s calls for comment.
MySpace, with 60 million users in August, and Facebook, with 19 million, are the top two such Web sites in the world, according to research by Nielsen/Netratings.
In addition to myYearbook.com, the sites that have agreed to add the Report Abuse! system are BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com, AsianAve.com, GLEE.com and FaithBase.com.
“We intend to have the most prominent abuse-reporting links in the industry,” Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old co-founder of myYearbook, said in a statement.
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Self-defense on the Web
What: Report Abuse! is a first-of-its-kind system designed by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office.
Who: Legitimate users of social networking sites can click on the icon to report predators, bullies and underage members; threats of violence or suicide; offers of sexually explicit material; identity theft; and other concerns.
When: Web site operators, which can volunteer to offer Report Abuse!, will have 90 days to make the system go live.
Where: Six sites have signed on, and New Jersey is encouraging others to join.
How: Complaints will go directly to Web site operators, which will investigate and, if necessary, report suspected crimes to law enforcement.
Why: One Web site alone, MySpace.com, has documented nearly 30,000 sex offenders more than 250 from New Jersey using its site.
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E-mail: younge@northjersey.com
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