A year ago, we asked a law student at the University of Ottawa to examine the virtual world Second Life, and report on what implications this type of environment may have for personal privacy and the protection of personal information.
Read moreIf you need a refresher, a Ponzi scheme, according to Wikipedia, is “a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors out of the money paid by subsequent investors rather that from profit. It “usually offers abnormally high short-term returns in order to entice new investors”.
Read moreRecently, a journalist for Wired magazine attempted to live a location-aware lifestyle. That means he tried to take advantage of the GPS capabilities of every electronic tool he could get his hands on, linking all his activities to his location and then transmitting that data to his network.
Read moreIncreasingly, employers are looking at how to tackle the thorny issue of employees’ use of social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn.
Read moreProtecting your kids from online predators in social networking environments is a hot topic nowadays – especially with the findings of a recent study by Ryerson University that found that “nine out of ten young Canadians socialize online regularly and frequently”.
Read moreThe author of a new article on surveillance in The Walrus thinks you do. Hal Niedzviecki says that while the thought of being monitored used to disturb us (think George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four), cameras and other surveillance techniques are so prevalent today that we’ve stopped noticing them. And, he says, when we do notice we don’t really care (case in point: when it was announced that 10,000 cameras would be installed in Toronto’s subways, streetcars and buses, he asserts that citizens “shrugged and went about their business”).
Read moreThe social networking site Facebook has been under scrutiny lately for lax security with its applications feature. Applications in Facebook are created by third-party software developers and are run on third-party servers. These applications can take many forms – a quiz, a game, or just another way to reach out to friends – but the common feature in all is that they allow software developers to access Facebook users’ personal data.
Read moreWe recently referenced this Q&A in the Times Online with Facebook’s chief privacy officer. Privacy guru Michael Zimmer pokes fun at the questions posed by the interviewer in a recent blog post and comes up with what he calls “a real set of questions” for the chief privacy officer at Facebook. Some samples:
Read moreThe Office of Communications in the U.K. has just released a research report on young peoples’ use of social networking sites. Among their findings:
Read moreThis week, Facebook launched new privacy control upgrades and, for the most part, the news reports have been positive.
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