Facebook faces possible fraud charges
September 30, 2007
ALBANY, N.Y. — The social networking Web site Facebook has been warned it could face a consumer fraud charge for failing to live up to claims youngsters there are safer from sexual predators than at most sites and it promptly responds to concerns, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Sunday.
“We expect an immediate correction eliminating the dangers exposed by our investigation,” said the spokesman, Jeffrey Lerner.
Cuomo announced last week that he had subpoenaed Facebook after he said the company did not respond to “many” complaints by investigators who were solicited for sex while posing as 12- to 14-year-olds on the site. Officials from Cuomo’s office met with Facebook on Friday after they said Facebook took three days to answer calls and e-mails from state investigators.
An official in Cuomo’s office said he and others are scheduled to meet with Facebook representatives this week and anticipate changes will follow immediately.
“We said, ‘You have got to make accurate representations on your Web site,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because court filings haven’t yet been made. “What we told them is, ‘Correct the language describing the site and stop marketing yourself as this pristine Web site . parents have a misimpression. You can’t mislead people.”
Lerner said Facebook’s contention of being safer than most sites was accurate when it started three years ago. But it’s now much larger, and the safeguards – and apparently response times for complaints – aren’t what they once were, he said.