Welcome!
This blog is for you. If you use the Internet, download music or connect with friends through social networking sites like Facebook, you’re going to be interested in what we have to say. Here, we’ll talk about how technology affects your privacy and share information about how you can safely build and protect your identity online. And we don’t want to just feed information to you – this is the place where you can comment on what we’re writing and submit your own blog posts on privacy issues!
We will post a new entry at least every week, or as often as we have new things to say. We hope to hear from you as well. If you use the Internet a lot and use social networking sites you should stay tuned for some information that you won’t want to miss!
In the meantime, here are some things to think about. We plan to talk about them in some of our future posts:
- Do you ever stop to think about the things you are putting online and how they might be permanent? Is there anything you would want to remove from the social networking sites, especially before a college, university or potential employer did an Internet search on you?
- Do you understand your privacy rights and why they are so important?
- Do you ever feel like your parents are paranoid about your online behaviour?
- Do you ever accept people you don’t know as “friends” on social networking sites?
- Did you ever stop to think about how your personal safety offline could be affected by what you tell people online?
Well, here’s how you can tell us!
It’s easy! Just click on the “comment” or “new post” button at the bottom of each post. Here, you will be asked to submit your name and e-mail address (this won’t be published online, it’s simply to enable us to get in touch with you) and you will see a box where you can type your comment or post. Then click on the “submit comment/post” button and we will receive it as an e-mail. Once we read it to make sure it’s appropriate (rude or offensive language won’t be accepted) then we’ll post it. We look forward to hearing from you!
June 5th, 2008 at 1:26 am
As an educator I dearly hope we hear from youth at this site … it would be wonderful to engage a whole range of viewpoints …
June 7th, 2008 at 1:31 am
I hope the government and privacy commisioners will look at this for a time to come (take note if you will):
1) Nowadays, with all these new ways of obtaining private information, the government should look for another means of protecting from social insurance number theft. If someone got ahold of some guy who put too much info on his profile page or website’s information, then that someone could go as far as to commit identity theft.
IE: We need to find a new way so that legitimate cases of lost SIN numbers can be sorted from the illegitimate ones.
I cannot stress this enough, current laws should combine with current technology to protect us. If the current laws can’t do that then change is mandated.
2) When marketing this site, try not to go over-governmental with it. The point of a social networking site or a blog in most teenager’s minds is to have fun; a relief post school, a connection to friends or to partake in the newest quiz about a tv show, movie, artist, etc.
When marketing this site, it should be just like the vision of any other social networking site except a truly “private” social networking site. Make everything legible so that people can understand the message (a good job so far).
Start hiring people to make programs to run over the site. Anything from arcade games and fun and pointless quiz programs to a program for debates and the betterment of our knowledge.
I would write out plenty of points but I will leave my comment at this:
When a website is successful, look for the cause and effect. Implementing cause will usually cause effect. Take the best of everything you can find and integrate it into this site and you will have a hit.
June 7th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Also add an edit button to the comments
And take the “my” prefix out… it’s been done.
June 11th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I’d like more information about how corporations or governments share personal information within their organizations. For example, if I fill out a form to enter a contest on Muchmusic.com, will they share my personal info with other parts of CTVGlobemedia, like TSN.com?
June 11th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Hi Andrew,
Corporations and government have a responsibility to tell you how they are collecting and using your personal information. Websites that collect information (for a contest, as an example) should have a link to a privacy policy or statement that spells out how your information is being collected and used. On Muchmusic.com’s site, for example, their Privacy Statement states:
“Personal Information is only used by us for the purposes stated at the time of collection or as otherwise set out in this section.
If you have participated in an online activity, your personal information will only be used for the purposes of that online activity, unless you otherwise provide us with your consent. We may ask for your permission to use your personal information for other purposes, for example, to send you an email newsletter or for marketing purposes. We will only use this information for these purposes if you have provided us with consent by “opting-in” on the online form.”
Links to privacy policies or statements are usually at the bottom of the website – always check for them on your favourite sites.
June 15th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Another suggestion for this website is to create forums.
not only would this help in the appeal the site needs, but it would attract a new audience and allow for easier moderation and the like. Discussions would start to take place on various topics that could well benefit the knowledge of both us and you.
Create forums for this site and you will end up with a much larger appeal spectrum.