New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Monday served Facebook with a subpoena after he said the company failed to respond to complaints about sexual predators and inappropriate content on the social network.

The move comes after the New York AG's office had been testing Facebook’s safety controls over the past several weeks, according to a statement.

A preliminary review of the site revealed significant defects in the safety measures Facebook has in place for protecting underage users, despite the Palo Alto, California, company’s tendency to position itself as a safer alternative to more popular social network MySpace.

“My office is concerned that Facebook’s promise of a safe web site is not consistent with its performance in policing its site and responding to complaints,” Mr. Cuomo said in the statement.

To test the site, the attorney general’s office set up fake Facebook accounts for investigators who pretended to be between the ages of 12 and 14. Soon after setting up their profile pages, Mr. Cuomo said several of the profiles received sexual solicitations from adults including one that read “u look too hot....... can I c u online (webcam)? im avl at ...”

The investigators then pretended to be concerned parents of the fake users and contacted Facebook to gauge whether the company would adequately respond by acting against the reported predators. Mr. Cuomo said the company often ignored the complaints and failed to act.

The attorney general’s team also contacted Facebook to complain about pornography in user groups and elsewhere on the site. The team determined that Facebook was inconsistent in its response to these complaints.

In a letter accompanying the subpoena, Mr. Cuomo wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailing his concerns that Facebook’s security measures have not kept pace with the site’s growth after it opened to non-university students late last year and to third-party application developers in late May. Between August 2006 and August 2007, Facebook’s unique audience in the United States has increased by 117 percent, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

In a statement on Monday, Facebook said it takes Mr. Cuomo’s concerns “very seriously.”

“As our service continues to grow so does our responsibility to our users to empower them with the tools necessary to communicate efficiently and safely. We …are constantly working on processes and technologies that will further improve safety and user control on the site,” the company said in the statement.

Facebook is not the first social network to draw attention from state attorneys general. Earlier this year the attorneys general from 52 U.S. states and territories demanded that MySpace turn over the names of thousands of sex offenders believed to use the site. In May, MySpace said it would comply. The action against MySpace was part of an effort begun by the attorneys general in 2006 to force social networks to better protect children from predators and inappropriate content.

Mr. Cuomo said he served the subpoena to force Facebook to turn over complaints it has received about potential threats to underage users as well as the company’s response to those complaints. The attorney general has also asked for Facebook’s official user safety policies and documentation of claims about those policies that were made to consumers.