Canadian kids are communicating online more than ever before, and are using tools like Skype sometimes even before they learn to walk. Many of us are astonished at how easily they adapt to new devices that connect to the Internet and at how these devices can quickly become part of their lives, as they use them to chat, surf, post, play and learn.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is launching a new youth privacy tool that will help teachers and community leaders talk with younger Canadians about their privacy online.
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.
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.
While there are always advance warnings about the potential privacy risks of emerging technologies, it usually takes a “killer app” for people to take notice of the real dangers. For geotagging, that app is the rather aptly named creepy.
Do you know how your location information is used? A recent survey commissioned by security company, Webroot, asked 1,645 social network users in the U.S. and UK who own location-enabled mobile devices about their use of location-based tools and services. The survey found that 39 percent of respondents reported using geo-location on their mobile devices and more than half (55 percent) of those users are worried about their loss of privacy.