• Advertising Age, Tuesday, September 25, 2007 10:30 AM

Investigators from New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office went undercover as under-age users of Facebook and were repeatedly sexually solicited.

Investigators posing as underage users "were repeatedly solicited by adult sexual predators on Facebook and could easily access a wide range of pornographic images and videos," according to the AG's office. "Even more disturbingly, Facebook often did not respond, and at other times was slow to respond, to complaints lodged by the investigators -- posing as parents of underage users -- asking the site to take action against predators who had harassed their children."

The AG is also issuing a subpoena to Facebook for complaints received about inappropriate solicitation and content, as well as its responses to such complaints. Several attorneys general and state governments have already targeted MySpace, which has deleted 29,000 profiles of sexual predators, and are pushing to require age-verification measures on social networks. The North Carolina State Senate, for example, passed a bill that would require parental permission for a user to sign up for a social network, but should it pass, it will almost certainly face legal scrutiny.

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