Citing evidence of fake Facebook profiles, the Federal Trade Commission said today that it had rejected a company’s application to draw on the social graph in order to confirm people’s identity.
“Identity verification via social-graph is an emerging technology and further research, development, and implementation is necessary to demonstrate that it is sufficiently reliable,” the FTC said in a letter sent to AssertID.
The company had sought approval of its plan to use people’s Facebook friends (and other social media contacts) to verify the identity of parents of young children. AssertID intended to do so in order to offer a service that would help companies comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits Web site operators and app developers from knowingly collecting certain information from children under 13 without their parents’ consent.
