OTTAWA – Young Canadians need to “think twice” about how much personal information they post on the Internet and take greater responsibility for how they live their online lives, Canada’s privacy czar warned Tuesday.
Noting many people have been fired, missed out on job interviews and academic opportunities for their over-sharing online, Jennifer Stoddart delivered her blunt message when she tabled her annual report to Parliament on Canada’s privacy-sector privacy law.
“Many young people are choosing to open their lives in ways their parents would have thought impossible and their grandparents unthinkable. Their lives play out on a public stage of their own design as they strive for visibility, connectedness and knowledge,” said Stoddart in her annual report.
“Such openness can lead to greater creativity, literacy, networking and social engagement. But putting so much of their personal information out into the open can also… leave an enduring trail of embarrassing moments that could haunt them in future.”
The 2008 report on the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act also looks at privacy complaint investigations, technology and privacy issues and the commissioner’s efforts to encourage the development of international privacy standards.
Stoddart’s most high-profile investigation last year, involving the popular social media site Facebook, married these issues.
Although based in California, the company has agreed to change the way it does business for its more than 300 million users worldwide to bring the site into compliance with Canada’s private-sector privacy law.
Facebook has until next summer to change the virtually unrestricted access of third-party developers to the personal information of Facebook users. To download popular games and quizzes, Facebook users have had to consent to share their personal information, except their contact details.
Facebook, seen as the industry standard when it comes to privacy, has agreed to retrofit its application platform in a way that will prevent any application from accessing information until it obtains express consent for each category of personal information it wishes to access.
Under the new permissions, users adding an application will be advised the application wants access to specific categories of information, and users will be able to control which information they are permitted to access.
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