Faceparty has deleted what it describes as "a huge number of
accounts" from its social networking site in recent weeks. It lists
'over 36 years old' as one of its reasons for deletion.
"We understand that only a minority of older users are sex
offenders, but you must understand that we cannot tell which," it
says in its explanation of the deletion of accounts.
"New government legislation means we need to check older users
on the sex offenders list," says its notice. "This legislation is
based upon checking email addresses against a government provided
list. Faceparty has never insisted on validated email addresses and
can therefore not participate in this new scheme."
A new law was passed earlier this month, the Criminal Justice
and Immigration Act, which contains provisions for the Secretary of
State to require sex offenders to register their email addresses or
other information. That, though, is not currently part of the law
and would require a ministerial order to become law.
The law makes no reference to the age of offenders. Neither that
law nor any other suggests that people over the age of 36 are more
likely to be sex offenders.
"Having discussed the use of our website with the home office
and the police, and further some pretty serious crimes caused by
older users, we were left with no option but to terminate a huge
amount of accounts, and without notice, immediately," says the
notice.
Faceparty has defended itself against accusations that it is
simply trying to create a younger, more valuable user base for
itself.
"Despite malicious rumours spread by a few people on the
website, it is not true that we have deleted members due to
'ageism'," its notice said.
Faceparty did not respond to a request for comment. It did say
in its notice, though, that the site did have a serious problem
with sex offenders. It said that accounts were deleted without
notice "because a gang of paedophiles had arrived on the website
and had carried out a series of attacks on younger users".
The Government has proposed a system which bears some similarity
to that described by Faceparty. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has
suggested a future system involving sex offenders registering their
email addresses with the Government.
That list would then be made available to social networking
sites who could check their users against it in order to help
prevent offenders using the networks to contact potential
victims.
One part of the new Criminal Justice and Immigration Act allows
a Secretary of State to increase the notification requirements of
sex offenders. Offenders can already be required to notify details
such as their name, address and national insurance number to their
local police station.
Those notification requirements could include a person's email
address, their passport number, and notice of any foreign travel,
the Home Office said in a review of child protection online from
2007.
A spokeswoman for the Child Exploitation Online Protection
Centre, a Government-backed centre, said that trying to ban users
older than 36 may not be very effective in combating child
abuse.
"It's pretty easy to lie about your age," she said. "One of the
things we'd like to see all sites do is adopt a Report Abuse
mechanism. We think social networking sites are fantastic but
providers have a duty of care to children. Children should be able
to use these environments but make it easy for them to report
abuse."
The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act also made it an offence
to possess extreme pornography, a move which had attracted
objections from some civil liberties campaigners. That part of the
Act is not yet in force.
