Facebook does not know how many under-13s or sex offenders in the UK use its platforms, a senior executive has said at the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. Answering a question about safety checks carried out on new accounts, Julie de Bailliencourt said the company had no way of verifying the age or criminal history of people signing up. Facebook has a minimum age requirement of 13. Asked by Jacqueline Carey, counsel to the inquiry, whether any documents were required to authenticate registration, De Bailliencourt said none were. A report in The Guardian notes that he said it would be difficult ‘to differentiate between a 14- and 12-year-old’. Asked if the site relied on open-source methods to determine whether someone may be a sex offender, she said: ‘We don’t make this check at this time.’ The latest phase of the inquiry is investigating how the Internet is used to facilitate child sexual abuse. Earlier it heard from the mother of two young children in the UK who were groomed and abused remotely online.