The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has launched a public consultation on emerging technologies, including online tracking, profiling and targeting of consumers by business. The deadline for written submissions is March 15th.
Privacy Commissioner Launches Public Consultation on Emerging Technologies
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A good idea, but…
I am not sure about just how much it will improve the privacy of Canadians online (with respect to cookies and social networking sites). For foreign companies, she can make recommendations; if the company is smart they will at the very least look at the recommendations to see if there are any that could be implemented without breaking legal obligations of their home countries.
A troubling issue is that more of these social networking sites are modifying their privacy policies, in particular with respect to sharing of data; the ones that I am familiar with have taken an opt-out approach so that you need to take action to increase your privacy settings with the change rather than reduce. Facebook did this recently, classmates.com has just announced a change as well.
Additionally, Symantec has changed the way that anti-virus protection renewals are done; if you’ve renewed online, they’ve kept your credit card info and have signed you up for automatic renewal (happened to me recently); you need to opt out of this setup rather than opt-in. Since I missed the first email on this the first I noticed was the email telling me that they charged my credit card $77.10 for the renewal. Good thing that email was still valid 🙂