Facebook monitors chat between users to look for criminal activity
A man using Facebook chat to solicit sex with a 13-year-old girl was busted by software used by Facebook that monitors all communication and alerts employees when it flags potentially illegal activity.
Friday, July 13, 2012
On March 9 of this year, a piece of Facebook software spotted something suspicious.
A man in his early thirties was chatting about sex with a 13-year-old South Florida girl and planned to meet her after middle-school classes the next day.
Facebook's extensive but little-discussed technology for scanning postings and chats for criminal activity automatically flagged the conversation for employees, who read it and quickly called police.
Officers took control of the teenager's computer and arrested the man the next day, said Special Agent Supervisor Jeffrey Duncan of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The alleged predator has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of soliciting a minor.
