Facebook, states agree to boost efforts to protect children

Social networking site Facebook Thursday announced that it is boosting its privacy protections as part of an ongoing effort to work with 49 state attorneys general to protect children online.

As part of its agreement with the state AGs, Facebook said it will continue to enhance age and identity identification tools on facebook.com and provide automatic warning messages when a child is in danger of providing personal information to an unknown adult.

In addition, Facebook confirmed its participation in the Internet Safety Task Force, created by MySpace Inc. as part of a January agreement with the attorneys general.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, in a statement. "We are proud to join 49 states and the District of Columbia in affirming our commitment to these principles and to continue improving our technology and policy solutions to keep kids safer on Facebook.

"The Attorneys General," Kelly added, "have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."

Facebook also noted that it will restrict the ability of users to change their listed ages and will aggressively respond to remove inappropriate content and groups from the site.

Facebook also noted that it plans to require users under 18 to affirm that they have read Facebook's safety tips when they sign up.

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