FTC: Watch out, social networks!

In fining Xanga.com $1 million, more than twice any previous fine of its kind, the Federal Trade Commission sent a clear message to the social networks this week that COPPA is in force where their industry's concerned (COPPA is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act). "The Xanga site stated that children under 13 could not join, but then allowed visitors to create Xanga accounts even if they provided a birth date indicating they were under 13," says the FTC in its press release. So at the time of its investigation, 1.7 million people had created accounts and given "birthdates" indicating they were 12 or under. The thing is, people can give their dog's birthday or the day of their first date and a Web site would never know. Xanga's response was: "Before these issues came to our attention, Xanga had in place a registration system intended to screen out underage users – reflecting our longstanding policy that no one under 13 is allowed to create an account. That system was inadequate because users were able to initially indicate that they were at least 13 years old when registering for the site, and then afterwards post a younger age on their profile. We found that an array of Xanga users created profiles with "birth dates" other than their actual day of birth when establishing their weblog. For example, pet bloggers registered with their pet's birthday, engaged bloggers registered with their wedding date…." Ironically, Xanga is barely a "social networking site." It really focuses on blogging and doesn't include social features like chat and instant messaging and doesn't allow "profile searches based on sex, age or gender." But it has shown leadership in implementing a number of safety measures, which are listed in the press release linked to above. [For the sake of full disclosure, Xanga is one of 11 companies supporting the BlogSafety forum, a Web site I co-direct.]