Facebook's safety agreement

In a settlement it has reached with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Facebook will now be replying to "the most serious complaints" by users about porn and unwelcome contacts within 24 hours, its chief security officer Chris Kelly told CBS News technology analyst Larry Magid in an audio interview. In its coverage, the Associated Press says Facebook also agreed to "report to the complainant within 72 hours on how it will respond" to the complaint. In addition, Facebook will hire an outside company approved by the attorney general's office to monitor its level of response to complaints and has updated its safety information pages focusing especially on info for parents. Kelly told Larry, who is also my co-director at ConnectSafely.org, that Facebook is now encouraging users to report to a parent or trusted adult as well as Facebook when things come up. The settlement ends General Cuomo's investigation of Facebook, during which he said Facebook was falsely advertising as a safer social-networking site. Though it started at Harvard and for a while focused solely on college and university users, Facebook now has some 47 million members of all ages, the New York Times reports. Here, too, is CNET.