Facebook facing the dock over sexual predators?


31 Jul 2007

The fast-growing social network for graduates and professionals Facebook is being probed by a US attorney general’s investigators over allegations that a number of convicted sex offenders had registered on the site as well as other claims the site contains inappropriate material.

Established in 2004 originally as a site for Ivy League college students in the US, the Facebook site has evolved into being a destination of choice amongst 30 million people and is the seventh most popular site in the US.

However, it has emerged that Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal has dispatched state investigators to look into three or more cases of convicted sex offenders registering on the site.

It is also alleged that investigators have come across “inappropriate images and content” on the social-networking site.

The news follows the recent threat of legal action from eight different state attorneys in the US that saw MySpace agree to hand over details on registered sex offenders that had a profile on its site.

Earlier this month MySpace said it detected and deleted 29,000 convicted sex offenders on its service.

In an interview with the New York Times, Blumenthal said: “There is no question that Facebook is encountering some of the same problems that MySpace has posed. They should be held accountable and we intend to do so.”

By John Kennedy