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Wednesday WTF: For Whom the Bell Sold

Vincent Colistro

You’ve got nothing to hide. You’re an upstanding, shoes-wearing citizen who smells like soap and carries good conversations. You haven’t a single thing to hide. What does it matter if Bell Canada, this past week, announced that it will track their customers’ location, media habits, search activity, website interests, and application usage? You’re a modern […] More »

Diaspora wants to be your private, decentralized, open source Facebook

natalie samson

If you’re like me and you shudder to think of the store of personal information you’ve inadvertently let loose online, you’ll be happy to know that a few altruistic software programmers are on the case. Four NYU students recently decided they’d had enough of heavily centralized, corporate-minded social networking sites. They took on the task […] More »

Wednesday WTF: Congratulations! You've won a criminal background check!

kim hart macneill

Virgin Mobile wants Canadians to join the hunt for the most fearless among us. Know what we fear? Massive privacy invasion! The contest involves posting a one minute video of yourself, doing something fearless, on YouTube. Skydiving or swimming with sharks are listed as prime examples of activities fearless Canadians partake in. On November 19th, […] More »

Who's really responsible for protecting our privacy online?

Graham F. Scott

Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, put out a press release today about how Canadians need to take more control of their private information online. Notably, Stoddart seems especially concerned about Facebook, reflecting the focus of her annual report to parliament from August. The Privacy Commissioner’s office seems especially concerned about  young people posting […] More »

Facebook's Privacy Scholars

kelli korducki

In an age when CNN can get away with quoting Twitter as “a source” in its coverage of Iran’s high-stakes political bedlam, it’s more than fair to assume that as a society, we’re still ironing out the kinks in our relationship with interactive media. For some of us that might mean, say, late-night microblogging about […] More »