14 leading social networks fail to protect minors

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14 leading social networks fail to protect minors

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Only Bebo and Myspace are two out of the 14 sites which had adequate default settings.

22 June,2011 09:41 pm

After examining 14 leading social networks, including Facebook, European Commission stated that social networking sites fail to protect children from online bullying and other crimes.Commission was disappointed by the default settings of most of the social networking sites and had come up with the idea to protect users profiles and data. Only Bebo and Myspace are two out of the 14 sites which had adequate default settings. Facebook, the worlds most popular social network, with more than 500 million users, was listed among the 12 that fell short. It is not the first criticism of Facebook from the EU. It came under fire for its facial recognition technology too. Most social networking sites are failing to ensure that minors profiles are accessible only to their approved contacts by default.Education and parental guidance are necessary and there is a need of more protection policies until youngsters can make decisions based on full awareness of the consequences.