Advertisement

Facebook to monitor for potential criminal activity

Video;Related Links;

July 18, 2012|By Dave Roberts | KWCH 12 Eyewitness News

(WICHITA, Kan.) — Out of the near-billion users of Facebook, a few are there to connect with people who they should not be connecting with. That's why the social network will be monitoring for potentially criminal activity between users, like if a child is solicited for sex.

"That's where the majority of people are and unfortunately if there's a bad guy who's looking for a child victim they're going to go where the children are," explained Sergeant Chester Pinkston of the Exploited and Missing Child Unit.

He says the majority of cases the EMCU gets are about activity on social networks, and in some cases the reports are made by the websites.

"Parents can't always see wach and every time that their child gets online and they don't always know each and every person their child may have contact with on those sites."

Advertisement

Facebook will not monitor each and every chat conversation or every single post. It will be using software to scan for things it deems suspicious. Some of those things include a conversation two users who aren't friends or users who recently became friends. Or if the users have a significant age difference, or have no mutual friends, or if they live far apart from one another.

"I would hope that Facebook's intent is clearly to help law enforcement as well as parents."

Facebook will start to monitor for criminal activity
kwch Articles
|
|
|