Patent ID: 8671453

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a request to establish a parent-child relationship for an account in a social networking system of a child user; receiving information identifying an account in the social networking system of a purported parent user of the child user; determining a first metric indicative of a validity of the purported parent user's account, the first metric determined based on information associated with the purported parent user's account in the social networking system; determining a second metric indicative of an existence of a parent-child relationship between the purported parent user and the child user, the second metric determined by comparing a first social data and a second social data in the social networking system wherein the first social data is one or more parent child indicators of the purported parent user's account and the second social data is one or more parent-child indicators of the child user's account; determining a confidence level indicative of a likelihood that an actual parent-child relationship exists between the purported parent user and the child user, the confidence level based on the first and second metrics; and determining, based at least in part on the determined confidence level, whether to establish the requested parent-child relationship between the child user and the purported parent user.