The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) is holding the first armchair discussion in its Insights on Privacy Speakers’ Series. Our first event will take place on Friday, December 10th with Chris Soghoian and Jesse Hirsh. Chris and Jesse will report from the frontiers of the privacy landscape and give their thought-provoking insights into what the future of privacy might look like. Known as stimulating speakers, Chris and Jesse will no doubt push some boundaries and engage the audience on their assumptions and understanding of privacy, identity and reputation online.
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Some of our public education efforts at the OPC focus on talking to young people about online privacy. How they face the challenges of controlling their information online and protecting their privacy is an important skill to surviving – and thriving- in a digital environment. Increasingly, we see it as part of a suite of skills necessary for digital citizenship.
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Last week, you may have heard about Firesheep, a plug-in for the Firefox web browser that lets an eavesdropper take over another user's session—such as a login to Twitter or Facebook—by intercepting packets on a local network and copying the victim’s cookie. What Firesheep does is to take advantage of a known security flaw and make it easy to exploit, by carrying out sidejacking (or session hijacking). There are two main parts to this exploit:
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Have you ever looked yourself up online and wondered how companies you have never heard of know your name? Where did they get your information and what are they using it for?
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With new technologies emerging all the time, it can be hard to stay in the loop in terms of privacy. Many applications and websites have privacy settings, but using them might not always be straightforward or obvious (or even seem to matter), especially to youth. That’s why the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is proud to be a sponsor of the Youth Privacy Online Conference in Toronto, held on Wednesday, December 1st.
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By now, many of you have heard of the information that is “leaking” from Facebook applications, and how this wide-ranging problem might affect your personal privacy.
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In today’s technology-driven, ever-connected world, privacy can be difficult to come by, and equally difficult to ensure. This is true not only in terms of what kind of information you should share, but also in terms of what kind of information you should collect. For small businesses, this task can be especially daunting because it is not always viable to have a specific team (or person) solely dedicated to determining what kind of information should be collected.
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Are you passionate about privacy, security and technology? (Best guess is that you probably are, if you're reading this blog.) Do you drive your friends crazy with your insatiable interest in and ever-growing knowledge of locational technology, surveillance systems, gaming or nanotech? Do you want to work with other like-minded people?
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One research area that the OPC tracks is biometrics – using physical features and behaviours to automatically identify people. Although biometric technologies can be very useful for establishing identities, they can also raise important privacy concerns. Biometric technology is constantly changing and the ability of systems to accurately recognize people is increasing. OPC staff recently attended the International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS) held in Washington D.C. where they heard about the latest research results.
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Government launches Canada's Cyber Security Strategy.
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