Teens Face Lawsuit for Fake Facebook Profile

Imagine one day discovering someone had set up a fake Facebook profile in your name. Not only does this profile have your real name and real phone number, but it has actual pictures of you. Even worse, the profile alleges you’re a racist and misrepresents your sexual preference. Oh, and the profile has over 500 friends.

Now, imagine discovering a fake Facebook profile set up in your son or daughter’s name. How angry would you be at the people responsible for ruining your child’s reputation and forcing him or her to face the lifelong consequences of a negative online image? When faced with this very scenario, one Illinois woman chose to fight back, filing a lawsuit against the four teens responsible for the cyber harassment.

As reported by Ki Mae Heussner for ABC News, the lawsuit, filed by a Mrs. Laura Cook, asks “for an unspecified amount in damages that exceeds $50,000,” charging the four defendants with “five separate counts, including defamation and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

According to the ABC News article, as soon as she discovered the fake account, Laura Cook worked with Facebook to take it offline. While Facebook’s quick action is certainly commendable (a Facebook spokesperson said that “reports of nudity, pornography and harassing personal messages are the highest priority complaints and receive a response within 24 hours”), there is no telling just how much damage was already done by the fake profile.

Furthermore, although Facebook definitely took the appropriate steps to resolve the incident, there are no laws that compelled the website to take down the profile. In other words, Facebook chose to take down the profile, it wasn’t forced to. So, if your private information ended up on a less scrupulous site, there is no guarantee you could remove it. In fact, the only protection given to online content comes in the form of copyright law, meaning the critical issue isn’t defamatrion, but rather ownership. ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik touched on this dilemma in the ABC News piece.

From the article:

“If Facebook did not want to, it would not have to take this down. Facebook elected to take this down,” said Michael Fertik, the CEO of ReputationDefender, an online reputation management and privacy company. “But there are plenty of sites that would not behave so responsibly.”

Noting that the law provides no incentive for Web sites to remove comments that could be considered defamatory, he asked, “Why are sites obligated to take down photos that someone else owns but not a defamatory site that can ruin a kids’ life forever?

Defenders of the legal landscape maintain that changing the law could stifle open discussion and free speech. But others argue that the laws should hold Web sites more accountable for the content they host.

“Facebook did the right thing, but as a society it is yet another example where we just dodged the bullet,” Fertik said.

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Given the phenomenal growth of the Internet, and social media in particular, there is bound to be an increase in the number of incidences like the one faced by Mrs. Cook and her son. If you’d like to learn more about how to talk to your teen about the Internet, check out this guide from ReputationDefender and the iKeepSafe Coalition.

For the full text of the complaint, check below.