Any unflattering photos of you online? Comments you made on a friend’s blog that you wish you hadn’t? When you can’t change what’s online about you, you might find yourself wishing you could just walk away from that stuff – disconnect your real-world self from your online self.

The CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, thinks you can. He even predicts that in the future, this practice would be commonplace:

“He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.

“I mean we really have to think about these things as a society,” he adds. “I’m not even talking about the really terrible stuff, terrorism and access to evil things,” he says.”

Already, some young people about to apply to university and look for jobs are making it a little harder for people to find them on social networking sites – by substituting middle names for last names, using nicknames, or making up entirely fictional names. However, changing your name legally isn’t nearly as simple as changing your name on Facebook. There is a long list of legal and long-term implications associated with changing your name, not to mention the historical implications of the change – how will your great-great-great-grand-daughter fill in the family tree if you erase all traces of yourself before the age of 18?

What do you think – should we be allowed a name change to escape an embarrassing past? Would you change your name if you could? Have you?

Two years ago, we launched our youthprivacy.ca website to engage people on the issues around young people and digital privacy.

When we launched youthprivacy.ca, Twitter had about 500,000 users, Google was rumoured to be entering the mobile phone market, and the idea of managing your digital footprint was just gaining some steam.

To say a lot has changed over the last 24 months would be an understatement.

We want to redesign the site to better present existing and new content, and highlight resources and work being done elsewhere on the topic. We also want the process of rebuilding this website to be open and transparent. We feel that there is a much larger community of public servants and private citizens with the experience, the expertise and the skill sets to make this a useful and highly collaborative exercise.

After all, why build communities of practice if we only continue to build projects within silos and concealed behind departmental garden walls?

We are inviting input from people with interest and expertise from both within government (specifically #w2p and #ux communities of practice, and those with experience reaching out to young people and engaging in public education and social marketing) and external to government (non-profit sector, educators and librarians, young people themselves).

Much of the process will be run on GCpedia to facilitate contribution among Government of Canada employees. For folks external to government without access to GCpedia, we’ll provide some updates on this page – and if you have ideas on how we can open up collaboration to the outside community, let us know.

Check out the wiki page on GCpedia or this page for additional information, and let us know if you interested in pitching in. And I’ll leave you with this thought:

“It’s always easier to tame a wild idea than to invigorate a limp one.”

Do you have toys and gadgets on your wish list this holiday? A stuffed toy or a cell phone or camera? Chances are you do because these days these toys and gadgets are more than they used to be. Just a few years ago a stuffed animal was something to cuddle with and a phone was, well, just a phone! Now, many stuffed animals come with codes that allow you to register them online so you can play games, feed and care for them, and even chat and play with other kids. And many cell phones are phones, computers and cameras, all in one.

And while such toys and gadgets can be fun, we want you to enjoy them without putting your privacy and personal information at risk.

Here are our tips for protecting your privacy as you enjoy your new gadgets and toys:

Think before you click – The Internet is a public arena, and photos and comments you post are permanent. Even if you delete them from a web page, they could continue to exist in archived pages, in your computer’s cache or on the computers of other Internet users who may have copied them. If you don’t want certain people to see something, now or in the future, don’t post it!

Pick and protect the perfect password – Your information is only as safe as your passwords. Use different passwords for different systems; make sure they are strong (eight characters or more and a variety of letters or numbers); never share them with anybody; and change them regularly.

Know your friends – Online, you can’t be 100 per cent sure who you are talking to. Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know in real life.

Protect your identity – Identity theft is a growing problem and the Internet is the least private of spaces. Don’t post or e-mail personal details such as your social insurance number, phone number, home address or birth date.

Be careful on online gaming sites – Online gaming sites are hotbeds of people accessing personal information. Be aware that ill-intentioned people can use information from your profile to establish accounts in your name, or use your stolen identity to access your existing accounts.

Be wary of e-mail or instant messages from unknown people – Don’t open online messages that seem odd or are from someone you don’t know. They could contain a virus or let a hacker gain access to your computer.

Have a happy holiday and enjoy all your new toys!

Today is National Child Day – also the 20^th anniversary of the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention of the Rights of the Child and made privacy a basic human right for everyone under the age of eighteen.

This means that privacy is your right. And with today’s world being so different than it was 20 years ago, this is something you may not think much about. Today, you are videotaped by security cameras almost everywhere you go. You are asked for your postal code or driver’s license when you buy a pair of jeans. You can instant message, update your status, download music, talk to friends on Facebook and play games on your computer with people all around the world. Twenty years ago if someone wanted to get in touch with you they had to phone you or send you a postcard!

Today, it is so easy to forget about privacy and why it’s important. And it’s easy to forget about the risks that are out there if you don’t protect your personal information. These risks can range from nuisance (all those marketers who are looking for people to target their ads to) to serious (from the people on the Internet who are looking for identities to steal, to the predators looking for victims). It’s also easy to forget that when you post comments, photos and videos, online, that information is public and permanent and almost impossible to remove.

So today, on National Child Day, we wanted to remind you that privacy is your right. And today is your day. So take some time to look around youthprivacy.ca. Click through the pages and find out how you can have fun online while protecting this valuable basic human right.

Our Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart is worried that maybe you don’t. After conducting an investigation into Facebook’s privacy policies, we’re now turning our attention to you as the school year gets underway. Because while you may be savvy about using social media, many of you still may not know how to create a secure online identity.

If you’re listening to the radio today you may hear a message from our office that we created especially for you. In case you miss it, we’ve provided clips from it for you here. The gist of it is that many young people are still jeopardizing their safety, and possibly compromising their futures, by sharing photos and information – some of it inappropriate – with people they don’t know… people who may not be who they say they are.

You need to always be aware that the personal information that you post online could be used in a variety of shady ways, from embarrassing you, to stealing your identity – even for finding out where you live, go to school, or your plans for the weekend. Our radio message urges young people (and their parents and teachers) to regularly visit youthprivacy.ca for information on safely using the Internet and social networking sites.

The message also reminds everyone that we’re inviting all young people, between the ages of 12 and 18, to participate in our second annual video contest. Create a one- to two-minute public service announcement on the importance of privacy by Friday, December 11th and you could win some really cool prizes!

Take a minute… What do you think of when you visualize a bully? Did you think of the scariest kid in school who torments kids for their lunch money? Although these types of bullies still exist, there is now a new kind of bully to worry about. This kind doesn’t just steal your lunch money, but will send you nasty text messages from their iPhone or post embarrassing comments on your Facebook wall. Meet the cyberbully.

What exactly is cyberbullying? Cyberbullying involves the use of technology, such as cell phones or the internet, to harass another individual on purpose. Although you may not walk away with bruises or a black eye, cyberbullying can often be much more psychologically damaging than its physical counterpart. Today’s youth are experiencing cyberbullying at an alarmingly increasing rate. Why? Probably because when people believe that they are acting anonymously they are more likely to say hurtful things because they think they won’t get caught.

Many of you may have been a victim – or even the bully – at one point in time. A 2008 cyberbullying survey, conducted by the University or Toronto, indicates that nearly 1 in 5 students have been bullied online in just the last 3 months! Cyberbullying can often have devastating consequences for both the victim and the bully. Not only can it can lead to a student withdrawing from school, but it also contributes to depression, isolation, eating disorders and, in extreme cases, even suicide. In severe cases the police may become involved…this can be bad news for the bully. 

If you are the victim of cyberbullying the Media Awareness Network recommends following these four steps:

• STOP- immediately leave the online environment or activity where bullying is going on.
• BLOCK e-mails or instant messages received from bullies. NEVER RESPOND.
• RECORD all harassing messages and send them to your Internet provider (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.). Most providers have policies about users harassing people on their server.
• TALK to a trusted adult about the cyberbullying; alert the police when bullying involves physical threats.

Long gone are the days where bullies were only found in the playgrounds. Unfortunately, they are now found sitting in their living rooms hiding behind the anonymous wall of their computers.

Have you ever posted personal information or pictures online without thinking about the privacy implications – and then regretted it afterwards? With the increasing popularity of social networking sites we often post without thinking twice. But what happens when you apply for a job, or try out for a competitive sports team – and realize that you’ve got pictures and comments posted online that you’d prefer to keep between you and your friends? Luckily, there are ways you can remove this information!

When it comes to removing information from social networking sites there are a few simple things you can try. (In this instance, when we say “information” we mean anything that you have posted or that someone else has posted about you – status updates, wall posts, pictures, blogs, messages.) Here is what you should do if you’re trying to remove information:

1. The obvious first step is to delete it if you can.

2. If someone else has posted information about you, kindly ask them to take it down.

3. If you can’t take the information off yourself or if someone else is refusing to take down your information, contact the website’s administrator and explain your situation. Here are links to guidelines for removing unwanted items at three popular networking sites:

Facebook
MySpace
LinkedIn

Now that we’ve covered tips on removing information from social networking sites, let’s take a look at search engines. Some of you have probably tried searching your own name on popular search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Here are some tips on what to do if you find something you’d like removed:

1. The first step is finding out what’s out there. This is easy – Google yourself!

2.  Does your name come up in direct correlation with any social networking site, blog or public profile? If it does, and you’d rather it didn’t, this is easy to prevent by using a pseudonym (another word for “username”) instead of  your full name as a username.

3. Contact the person in charge of the site which is displaying your information on Google. Kindly ask them to take the information off.

The best way to avoid having to do any of this is to think ahead from now on. Make sure you think before you click – don’t post anything you might not want up there a few days or even years down the road. This problem is so common that there are now companies who make a profit from people who want information taken off the web. This is because once something is online it often gets stored in so many places that it’s almost impossible to get rid of. Think twice before you post any information online and you won’t have to worry about any of this stuff in the future!