Social networking sites fail to protect children’s privacy and reputation
The European Commission released an evaluation report on the implementation of the Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU on the 21st June 2011.
The report expresses the Commission’s disappointment that social networking service providers are still failing to implement the principles of privacy by default.
21 companies have signed up to the EU Principles including Facebook, Google, Microsoft Europe and Yahoo Europe. The agreement between the social networking service providers and the Commission is that children or young people that subscribe to their services should be provided with guidance and tools to enable them to manage their privacy online as well as their reputation. Providers are expected to work collaboratively with other stakeholders including parents, teachers, carers and educational bodies. Whilst the “report abuse” mechanisms provided by social network service providers have been successful the Commission is now drawing up a revised version of the principles to focus in particular on how “to protect minors from unwanted contacts but also protect their online reputation”.
Recently Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda has said “I am disappointed that most social networking sites are failing to ensure that minors’ profiles are accessible only to their approved contacts by default. I will be urging them to make a clear commitment to remedy this in a revised version of the self-regulatory framework we are currently discussing”.
