Facebook has called on the ex-detective who posed as a 14-year-old girl online on a "well-known social network" and said he was approached by men making sexual suggestions within minutes to name the site he used.
But Mark Williams-Thomas, whose experiences were described by the Daily Mail in a contentious story this week, declined to name the site today. He suggested that it would not be helpful to the site's users – and that it might damage its reputation or attract paedophiles to use it more extensively.
A spokesperson for Facebook said that it was important to identify the site so that young users could be protected. "If you really want to protect people online, then you should name sites which allow this. It's up to the Daily Mail and Mark Williams-Thomas. If they really want to protect their readers, they should give the name."
However, Williams-Thomas said that although the operators of the site would be able to identify it from his description in the story written in the Daily Mail earlier this week, identification would not be beneficial because it might attract unwelcome users. "The site would implode," he told the Guardian.
Facebook is threatening to sue the Daily Mail over a story which appeared in Wednesday's paper under Williams-Thomas's byline which was headlined "I posed as girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you". The piece described how Williams-Thomas had created a profile on a social networking service of a 14-year-old girl and within minutes of the profile going live had been contacted by men aged between 20 and 40 seeking sexual gratification.
The Mail has accepted that it wrongly suggested that the social network was Facebook, issuing an apology and blaming the error on "miscommunication". However, Facebook is still considering whether to sue for damage to its reputation.
Facebook has come under fire this week after the conviction of Peter Chapman, who used Facebook and other social networking systems to pose as an 18-year-old boy and lure 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall to a meeting, upon which he raped and killed her. Some police organisations have criticised Facebook for not installing a "panic button" system that would let young users alert them over their concerns – although there is no evidence that Hall had any worries about who she thought Chapman was.
Williams-Thomas, who was a detective with Surrey police until 2002, previously made an ITV documentary about the hunt for paedophiles in which he shadowed a team from the Metropolitan Police's Paedophile Unit.
He added that the piece which appeared in the Daily Mail was part of an ongoing study being carried out into safety of social networks, which will be published later this year in a peer-reviewed journal.
The Guardian
