European Commission urges social-networking service providers to improve child safety policies

The European Commission is urging social-networking service providers to improve their child safety policies. In February 2009, 17 social-networking service providers such as Bebo, Facebook, Google and Microsoft signed an agreement on "Safer Social Networking Principles for the EU" (see Legal update, Social-networking service providers sign agreement on child online safety). The Commission has published a report, in which it says that most of these companies had empowered minors to tackle online risks by making it easier to change privacy settings, block users or delete unwanted comments and content. However, Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said more needed to be done. Less than half of social-networking providers made profiles of under-18 users visible only to their friends by default and only one third replied to user reports asking for help. Source: European Commission press release, 9 February 2010.

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