Palo Alto, Calif. - Online social network Facebook on Thursday introduced a number of new privacy protections intended to safeguard younger users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, the Associated Press reported.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Facebook is implementing changes to its social network that will allow users to control what their friends, and friends of friends see on their profiles, Reuters reported. Members will be able to create up to 100 "friends lists," where each list is allowed different levels of access to their profile information. The company also confirmed that it will introduce a new Web-based chat feature in a couple of weeks.

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace online social network announced on Friday a new Internet safety public service announcement, safety-related website, and partnerships with nonprofit organizations iKeepSafe and Enough is Enough. The PSA, which will encourage parents to talk with teens about the Internet use, will air over the next two months across Fox broadcast and cable networks. "MySpace is stepping-up our safety education efforts," said Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer. "We believe that parents are the first line of defense when it comes to protecting teens in the offline and online worlds, and they should have as many educational resources as possible to safeguard their families."

New York - After complaints from members of much difficulty in fully deleting their profiles from the social network, Facebook has modified its site to make it more clear to users how they can delete profiles, but stopped short of offering a one-step delete option, The New York Times reported.

New York - New York may become the first state to enact a mandatory ban on sexual predators from accessing social networking sites like MySpace (NYSE: NWS) and Facebook, after district attorneys from all five boroughs endorsed a bill proposed by N.Y. State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

San Francisco - News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace online social network has quietly fixed a glitch on its website that allowed users to access the photos on some profiles that users had deemed "private," Wired.com reports.

San Francisco - A glitch in News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace website has for months allowed users to view the pictures on profiles whose owners, including 14 and 15 year-olds, had deemed them as "private," Wired.com reported. The report details several instances where groups of self-proclaimed pedophiles or voyeurs have used the glitch to access and share such private pictures online.

New York - News Corporation's (NYSE: NWS) MySpace announced on Monday a joint effort with the Attorneys General of 49 states and the District of Columbia, to adopt a set of principles for social networking site safety, and make changes to its website to protect youth against sexual predators. The announcement from MySpace comes after pressure from several State Attorneys General, which led the company last year to begin searching for and deleting the profiles of convicted sex offenders.

If you dig beneath the surface of the brouhaha over Robert Scoble getting his Facebook account suspended for testing a new Plaxo Facebook app that mines user email addresses in violation of Facebook’s terms of service, you’ll find evidence of two increasingly apparent realities about the future of the web:

1. Data is POWER
2. A war will be fought over control of the data

This is a post that I am guessing will get some fairly passionate responses on either side of the debate. Here's the question lots of people are asking today: where and how much does privacy really matter to you online? This is a critical question for 3 reasons:

Palo Alto, Calif. - The Facebook online social network on Wednesday announced that it will make its controversial Beacon marketing feature completely optional for the service's 55 million members.

As with Facebook Beacon’s implosion, the PR tailspin of Facebook itself is more interesting for what we can learn from it than why it is happening. What’s most interesting about Facebook’s downturn, as Josh Quittner observes, is that there’s not wrong with the technology:

Facebook Beacon, currently in the process of going down in flames, is a classic case of overreaching. So much has been written about what’s wrong with Beacon — blatant privacy violation, lack of blanket opt-out, failure to make it opt-in, gathering data from non-Facebook users — but I haven’t seen much about WHY they got it so wrong. (Except for Umair, of course, who called Facebook evil back when everyone was still slobbering over them.) The reason why Facebook got it so wrong with Beacon is actually much more interesting and important to the evolution of media, advertising, and technology than the reason why Beacon is imploding.

New York - Online social network Facebook may alter its controversial new "Beacon" service, which alerts members' friends when they make purchases at certain partner sites, Businessweek.com reports. Since the feature was introduced earlier this month, some users have complained that Beacon is an invasion of privacy, and in some instances has unwittingly alerted members to holiday gift purchases from family or friends.

New York - Google (NASD: GOOG) is working on a Web-based file storage service that would allow users to store all of their word-processing documents, music, video and photos on the company's servers, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The service, which could be released as early as a few months from now, would provide some storage space for free, and charge a fee for additional space, people familiar with the matter told The Journal.

Dulles, Va. - AOL (NYSE: TWX) on Wednesday launched a new program designed to better inform online consumers about behaviorally targeted advertising, a technology increasingly being used by AOL and other companies to serve the most relevant ads to Internet users.

Washington - Nine consumer privacy organizations on Wednesday asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to create a list of consumers who do not want their online behavior tracked for advertising and other purposes, similar to the national "Do Not Call" list the FTC operates to prevent calls from telemarketers.

Cincinnati, Ohio - The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week struck down a law that required adult entertainment providers to keep records on all of the performers featured in their products, saying the law was overly broad and violates First Amendment protections.

San Francisco - An Indiana woman has sued online social network Facebook, claiming the company is profiting when its users mistakenly send unwanted text messages to mobile phones whose numbers previously belonged to other consumers, the Associated Press reported.

Boston - StubHub, an online marketplace for event tickets owned by eBay, has been ordered by a judge to turn over the names of 13,000 customers who bought or sold New England Patriots tickets to the team, which prohibits sales of its tickets for more than $2 over their face value, the Boston Globe reported.