In light of the recent negative publicity and criticism surrounding social media and in particular social networking platforms such as Facebook. It has become apparent that while everyone recognises that Social Networking is a powerful platform to help people and businesses share information and experiences, strong actions and immediate measures need to be put in place across the industry to ensure a safe and secure networking environment.

Social Networking is not a new concept and has been attracting the dark elements of society for the past 20 years.  Through the years Paedophiles and Terrorist organisations have been exploiting the unmoderated nature of chat-rooms and social media platforms in order prey on victims or corrupt opinion.

The blame for this activity cannot be left solely at the feet of service providers, as the government and society in general must take some element of criticism and responsibility for their lack of ‘safe-surfing’ education and actions to moderate and control this.
Over the coming months media pressure with dictate heavy changes on how we use social media platforms such as Facebook and Bebo, and more importantly how we can help protect vulnerable users such as children.

The following checklist is a suggested process and the actions that Silver Pride Software are developing to increase the level of security in their SPARK Social application thus ensuring a safe and secure system for their clients.

•    Install and make visible across all areas of the website, an Industry recognised Panic & Instant Alert Button.
•    On clicking the button, it will immediately terminate the conversation and record all activity.
•    Instantly Informing conversation participants and complainant of actions and next steps.
•    Collates all details such as accused and complainant usernames, date and time recorded, actual conversations and emails this to a nominated administrator.
•    An email explaining this process is also emailed to the users warning against mis-use of this panic button and possibility of termination of account.
•    The administrator will then have the option, once all of this information has been reviewed, to either inform the local authorities of a violation, in-turn suspending the accused account and informing them via email of this action.
•    Or if the complaint is not deemed serious, a warning will be issued and this will be flagged against all users’ profile (not publically visible) in order to provide an auditable trail for future reference.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of actions, but a suggested way forward in which we are looking to protect all users, enabling them to continue with social networking knowing that SPARK Social is working to keep them safe & secure.

You can see SPARK Social and the SPARK Web Management suite exhibiting at the up and coming Social Media World Forum – 15/16 March – Olympia.