EDITORIAL – Facebook safety still questionable

As college students, we’re entitled to a love/hate relationship with Facebook. Some days,… As college students, we’re entitled to a love/hate relationship with Facebook. Some days, we’ve had enough; other days it’s the best thing since, well, MySpace.

Actually, that’s the reason we’re all on Facebook to begin with, right? It’s the not-as-creepy alternative to the other social networking sites out there, which have been known to attract a significant number of sexual predators. Just this year, MySpace said it removed 29,000 convicted sex offenders from its site.

So when Facebook emerged in early 2004 with its clean, user-friendly homepages that it promised were limited to members of other college networks, it set itself apart from other social networking sites, like MySpace and Xanga, that were open to any user who provided an e-mail address and claimed to be at least 14-years-old.

Because of the built-in security that comes along with only allowing college students to view each other’s profiles, Facebook trumpeted itself as a safer, more controlled form of social networking.

The problem is that while we’ve been hidden in our cocoon of na’ve social networking security, Facebook has been slowly evolving into the one thing it said it was distinguishing itself from.

More than three years – and one photo sharing application, advanced search and News Feed – later, Facebook is now open to any person (42 million of them, to be exact), regardless of network or university affiliation.

The site also recently announced a decision to make some members’ profiles searchable by people who are non-members through external search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Surprisingly, while Facebook has dramatically expanded its inclusiveness, its security precautions have changed little in the past few years. Members can restrict who can view their profile and search for them, and the site claims to ban the posting of obscene or harmful material.

But the website has done little to protect its younger users from sexual predators. And now, the Facebook’s security precautions – or lack thereof – have come under government scrutiny.

Tuesday, the New York state attorney general’s office issued a subpoena to the company, requesting documents related to security measures the site promises to users. The subpoena is part of an ongoing investigation conducted by New York’s attorney general Andrew Cuomo, who claims that Facebook’s advertising and statements to users might be “materially misleading” under state laws that prohibit deceptive business practice, according to The New York Times.

As part of the investigation, Cuomo enlisted an investigator to set up a profile for a fictitious 14-year-old girl. About a week later, a 24-year-old man sent a message through Facebook asking her for “nude pics.” The investigator, who also posed as the girl’s mother, sent an e-mail message to Facebook reporting the man’s request. Facebook had promised to review the man’s message, but as of Monday his account was still on the site.

It’s upsetting – and a little scary – that Facebook has proven that it doesn’t follow through on all of the security complaints it receives. We’ll admit, we’ve grown attached to the site over the years, but does that attachment have to come along to giving up our own privacy and security?

The 2007 Facebook is significantly different than Facebook circa 2004 – and that’s OK. As long as founder Mark Zuckerberg realizes that along with expanded inclusiveness must come expanded privacy settings and regulation of inappropriate messages and photos.