In January, MySpace announced that it had entered an agreement with 49 state attorneys general regarding the protection of the data of minors who are using its services. The deal is supposed to complement the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which protects the data of children under the age of 13, by creating standards for the protection of data for teenagers between the age of 14 and 17.

In this regard, the deal calls for several changes to be made to the social networking site. The majority of the changes deal with access that users are given to individuals under the age of 18. For example, the changes will prevent any user from browsing for an individual who is under the age of 16. In addition, the new tools will allow users to make their profiles “private,” so that access can be limited to certain individuals. Thus, to date, the deal includes the following changes:

• MySpace will create a closed section called “high school” for all users who are under the age of 18.
• No user may browse for a user who is under the age of 16.
• The default setting for users who are 16 and 17 will be changed from “public” to “private.” If a user under the age of 16 changes this setting, his profile may still only be viewed by users who are under the age of 18.
• Users who are older than 18 will only be able to search for students who are graduating in the current or upcoming year;
• Users who are older than 18 years cannot add those under the age of 16 unless they know his or her last name or e-mail address; and minors will be able to automatically default their profiles to “private.”
• Users aged 14 – 15 will be automatically assigned a private profile and “friends” on the network may only be given access to their profile if the person making the request already knows the user’s e-mail address and last name.

In addition to these changes, MySpace has also agreed to create an Internet Safety Technical Task Force to create age and identity verification tools for social networking sites. The task force will consist of other social networking sites, child protection groups, age and identity verification experts, and technology companies. Every three months, this task force will have to report its findings to the attorneys general.

Finally, MySpace has also agreed to create a list of email addresses, provided by parents, for individuals who have restricted access to the social networking site. This is one controversial part of the initiative, since opponents feel that a registry of children’s email addresses may be enticing for a hacker or child predator.

The deal between MySpace and 49 state attorneys general demonstrates that data protection of minors is a primary concern for regulators. The only state who was not involved in the deal was Texas; Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott chose not to sign the agreement, explaining that his office did not want to give a false sense of security to children and parents.

The deal will likely force other social networking sites, such as Facebook and Friendster, to evaluate their platforms to ensure minors are adequately protected.

Arent Fox will continue to monitor this issue. For questions, please contact Anthony Lupo or Sarah Bruno.

Anthony V. Lupo
lupo.anthony@arentfox.com
202.857.6353

Sarah L. Bruno
bruno.sarah@arentfox.com
202.775.5760