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Insights on Privacy - Youth Privacy

Do youth care about privacy? We will explore this question on September 8, 2011, when our Office holds its next Insights on Privacy armchair discussion.  We have invited two experts on young people’s use of social media, Kate Raynes-Goldie (@oceanpark) and Matthew Johnson (@MFJ72) to talk about what privacy means to youth and how we can help youth preserve their privacy by promoting digital literacy skills.

Young Canadians in a Wired World – Phase III is Here!

The Media Awareness Network, benefactor of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s Contributions Program, has launched the third Phase (Phase III) of its ongoing study, Young Canadians in a Wired World (YCWW). This third phase is a crucial element to the project, as it will shed a more distinct light on the need for online education resources in classrooms and communities.

Public and private online spaces

One of the themes to emerge from our 2010 Consumer Privacy Consultations was the blurring of the divide between our public and private lives online. As we note in our consultation report:

2011-12 Contributions Program privacy research and awareness projects announced

Our Office has just announced this year’s recipients of our Contributions Program, which funds data privacy research and public awareness projects.

Privacy Leakage on Popular Web Sites

We have been following recent cases where online social networks have been accused of leaking personal information to third parties. The leakage is caused by the networks’ use of referrer headers (information about where on the web a user is coming from) that can include the username, allowing automatic linking to profile information if it is available.

Insights on Privacy - Privacy, Surveillance, and Public Safety

On June 23^rd, 2011, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner is holding the fourth Insights on Privacy armchair discussion. We heard in April about opportunities for privacy in the design of intimate devices that we share our lives with every day, like smart phones, and the sensor-rich landscape that’s upon us.

New privacy self-assessment tool for organizations

On our website this week, we’re launching a new online tool to help businesses better safeguard customer and employee information.

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Privacy and network education

Last month, our Office was invited to participate in a youth privacy conference hosted by the American Library Association (ALA). The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has been focused on the issue of libraries and privacy awareness for the last three years, thanks to a grant from the Open Society Institute.  They plan to focus their efforts in 2011 on developing strategies for how best to deliver the privacy message to young people and see libraries as ideal places for youth to learn about privacy. They brought together privacy advocates, policy experts, librarians, educators, and our Office to pick our brains on how to best achieve this.