MySpace parental controls slammed

An internet child safety expert has attacked MySpace's reported free parental control software plans, describing the popular social networking site's safety procedures as 'feeble'.

Linda Criddle, author of Look Both Ways, said that the "entire premise that MySpace is building on is wrong".

MySpace is planning to offer parents the ability to check the information their children enter on their MySpace profiles, though it won't allow them to snoop on their child's email or personal messages.

"This ‘safety initiative’, like other recently announced MySpace safety initiatives, is focused on getting more advertising dollars and seeming to comply with US government concerns. MySpace isn’t actually trying to protect consumers in any holistic fashion," said Criddle.

The US government, though it has been pressuring MySpace to introduce some controls to protect its members, is not approaching the problem in the correct way, says Criddle, by asking for "short term fixes to alleviate the symptoms when they should be requiring a full set of safety standards".

In a scathing attack on the proposed plans, former Microsoft employee Criddle questioned whether parents would be the only people using the MySpace parental controls, codenamded Zephyr.

"If there is no authentication that it will be the parents - and only the parents - who can view the information on a child there is potentially more, rather than less risk," Criddle told Web User.

Furthermore, MySpace's proposal to block the email accounts of known sexual predators is "utterly absurd".

"The only thing the sexual predator email list will do is help MySpace dodge real accountability for monitoring the safety of their site," said Criddle.

But it's not just MySpace that comes in for criticism. The whole social networking community is failing to protect those it relies on, according to Criddle.

"While other companies have rightly declined to join MySpace’s feeble ‘efforts’ in online safety, consumers should recognise that the problems are not on MySpace alone. This is an area where the entire industry has failed to provide adequate safety tools or messaging or enforcement and consumers should be howling with outrage and demanding considerably more than they are requiring today."

http://look-both-ways.com/

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