With its founder already looking at a trial relating to the basic underlying code of the social network, Facebook has come under fresh criticism – that it allows child predators on its site. Investigators working for the Connecticut attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, were checking on three cases where they allege convicted sex offenders registered on Facebook, and also “inappropriate images and content.” Connecticut officials have contacted the site, requesting it remove the profiles in question. This comes just after MySpace has removed 29,000 profiles of convicted sex offenders. Facebook says it has received some reports of sex offenders on the site, but typically takes down such profiles within 72 hours. “We want to be a good partner to the states in attempting to address this societal problem,” said Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer. “We’ve worked with them for quite some time now, and we look forward to continuing our fruitful partnership.” He claimed not to know of the Connecticut investigation. Facebook began in 2004 as a social network for college and high school students, and originally restricted communication to those at the same school. More recently it opened to the public at large, but has kept various restrictions in place. No full profile is available to just anyone, and in theory those of users under 18 aren’t visible to anyone over 18 unless the pair are registered as friends. However, that can be circumvented. Facebook has suggested that it won’t work through Sentinel Tech Holding, the company that identified the sex offenders on MySpace. Instead it wants to build a database of e-mail address and names of offenders which could be compared against its members. The main problem with that, though, is so far only 13 states have laws requiring sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses.
