Mousetrap weblog: Can Facebook protect us from ourselves?

Social networking sites should carry the telephone numbers of child welfare agencies, the police and confidential hotlines under guidance to be published tomorrow, aimed at improving online security.

Sites are also urged to set the default privacy settings of under 18s to private or only allow it to be viewable by friends chosen by the user.

The draft Home Office guidanace, seen by The Times, also urges parents to highlight to their children the dangers of flirting on line and arranging to meet strangers they have encountered on the internet.

The Home Office task force on child protection on the internet says: “Social networking and user interactive services offer many postive opportunities for children and young people to communicate, interact and share content and interests.

“However, children and young people (under the age of 18) may also be vulnerable to inappropriate or harmful contact through these services. Like the real world, there is no environment which is completely safe."

The guidance states that social network sites should offer straightforward ways for children and young people to report suspected abuse including the emergency 999 number, and the numbers of childwelfare organisations such as the NSPCC and Childline, plus confidential helplines.

Sites should clearly state during registration what information will appear and what will be in private. “Users should then be given the opportunity to hide, limit availability to or edit this information”, the guidance states.

It also recommends setting the default for full profiles to private or to the users approved contact list for everyone registering who is under 18.

“A setting to private should ensure that the full profile cannot be viewed or the user contacted except by ‘friends’ on their contact list unless they actively choose to change their settings to public or the equivalent,” the guidance says.

The report urges social networking sites to investigate age verification technologies because at present no technology is actively used to verify the age of users.

MySpace, Bebo and Facebook, leader social network sites, say that they remove profiles of users that are found to be too young on their sites.

Users should also be warned of the dangers involved in posting certain information particularly personal details identifying their home addresses, images containing information on the location and images of other people without first obtaining their consent.

Service providers should ensure that the private profiles of users under 18 are not searchable unless consent is given.

“Social networking or interactive services with an integrated site search should not allow users to search public profiles of users under the age of 18 using sensitive data fields, such as age, sex and location, or school."

The guidance also tells parents and carers that they should not be afraid to become involved in their children’s online activities.

They should become familiar with social networking and interactive sites and discuss how they operate with their children.

The guidance urges parents to discuss the issue of privacy with their children. “Advise you child not to share any information that may help locate them in the real world, For example, a photograph of a school uniform or street sign,” the guidance says.

It adds: “Parent and guardians should discuss, and emphasise, particularly with older teens, the dangers of flirting on line with people they have first met online.”

The guidance has been prepared after discussions involving Government officials, the police, Internet firms, childrens charities and academics.

Millions of children are using social networking websites intended for older users, according to a study by the media regulator Ofcom.

More than a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds claimed to have a profile page on a social networking website, despite nominal age restrictions aimed at preventing pre-teens from using such sites.

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