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For the past two years Blumenthal and other states' attorneys general have negotiated with both Facebook and MySpace to implement more than 60 new safety measures to protect children from online predators and from gaining access to inappropriate content, like pornography.

Under the agreement with Facebook, its officials have agreed to prominently display safety tips, and to require users under the age of 18 to affirm that they have read the tips. Users over 18 can no longer search for under-18 users, and Facebook officials will automatically be notified when someone under 18 is in danger of providing personal information to an adult user.

Parents will also be provided with tools to remove a child's profile from the site. Inappro­priate images and content will be removed, and ads for age-restricted products, like alcohol and tobacco, will be limited to users old enough to purchase those items. Most significantly, Facebook agreed to diligently search for and remove profiles of registered sex offenders, and it will "in­crease efforts to remove groups for incest, pedophilia, cyber-bullying and other violations of the site's terms of service and expel from the site individual violators of those terms."

What You Can Do If you are concerned about your children accessing adult material from their wireless phones/devices, consider the following: Monitor how your children are using their wireless phones or other wireless devices. For example, are they using them mainly for talking, or are they using them for messaging, taking photos and downloading applications? Check with your carrier to see what types of material it offers and what types can be accessed from your children’s handsets. Check with your carrier to see if there are ways to prevent access to and downloading of content that may contain inappropriate material and that is available on a per-use or per-application basis (e.g., games, wall paper images, songs). Monitor your bill. Any content purchases made from a wireless phone should appear on your monthly bill, so check your bill to see if any purchases have been made from your children’s phones/devices. The FCC requires that the descriptions of charges on wireless carrier bills be full, clear, non-deceptive, and in plain language. Check with your carrier to see what handsets are available for your children that are not capable of accessing advanced applications that may contain adult material. Check with your carrier to see whether subscriptions to wireless data or wireless Internet packages also offer access to adult material on your children’s phone.

The Wireless Foundation has been working since 2005 to educate kids as well as their parents and teachers about the safe and responsible use of cellular phones through the Get Wise About Wireless program. 

The resources below can help you to keep your children safe online, such as a parent-child agreement on responsible and acceptable use of a wireless device, tools your carrier may have available to keep your family safe online, as well as other useful links.