If Ottawa thinks the census is invasive, what about the 64 trackers that popular websites install on visitors’ computers?
An interesting article from the Globe and Mail a few Saturday’s ago. More interesting were the comments on this article. They ranged from political jabs at Harper to security advice on browsers, cookies, etc. All valid… even the jabs at Harper ! One piece of advice I would add to businesses would be to ensure you have a web usage policy in place as well as the technology to help you inforce this policy… an ounce of prevetion… as the saying goes.
Here is the rest of the article…
In January of this year, researchers at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation tried an experiment. The online privacy advocacy group set up a Web page, and collected and stored the browser information of everyone who visited it.
There were no tricks. The site would not steal any data or urge casual visitors to install tracking software. It would simply log the same basic information almost all Internet users in the world inadvertently hand over each time they visit a website, including their time zone and Internet-protocol (IP) address – important clues to their location.
The most alarming result of the study of more than 470,000 Web surfers is that 83.6 per cent of them had an instantly identifiable, totally unique fingerprint: Their particular combination of settings and information was unlike that of any other user, increasing the chance they could be personally identified, even though they had done nothing but make a few clicks of the mouse.
When Parliament was prorogued last month by Canada’s Conservative party government, the so-called anti-malware bill, and three other tech-related bills died.
Getting them back on the legislative agenda will depend on the prime minister’s priorities
The bills are C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, which covers spam and malware; C-47, which gives police increased power for criminal investigations; and two pieces of legislation, C-46 and C-58, are for fighting child pornography.
Of particular interest to those gearing up their email campaign marketing plans for the new year, is Bill C-27 which forbids anyone in Canada from sending a commercial message to any electronic address unless the receiver has consented. An exception is if the person sending the message has had a business transaction with the recipient in the previous 18 months. Penalties range from up to $1 million for individual violators to up to $10 million for organizations.
As a business owner, this may be your window to run that email campaign to prospects you had planned. As an over spammed consumer, hopefully Bill C-27 gets resurrected and passed soon !
Read realetd story on Network World Canada.
It’s taken some time, but I’ve finally taken the first step and got my blog up and running.
It’s my hope that this site flourishes into a site where people can glean from and contribute to a dialog on IT Security from a Canadian perspective.
I will be posting news articles, resources and of course my own thoughts on everything ranging from technology, business processes, legislation and all things in between.
Please feel free to ask questions and comment.
And thanks for visiting.
