A friend of a friend of a friend knows you’re on vacation
As part of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s outreach effort, we are exploring other vehicles for communicating important privacy issues. We have already begun this blog, are experimenting with videos on YouTube and Google Video, and now have finished a Flash presentation.
The Flash presentation found below asks “what would you want a friend of a friend of a friend to know about you?” From our point of view as privacy advocates, a lot of online users do not take the time to really read and understand the user agreements required by all social networks. As online media consumers, we are used to “clicking” a box and ignoring the text inside.
It’s becoming obvious that a lot of Canadians – and others – are signing over their privacy rights to these companies in exchange for access to increasingly popular social networks.
This is a choice they can make, but we would hope that people would take a minute to think about their choices – and how much information they end up handing over to corporations, advertisers and marketing companies.
View the presentation: What does a friend of a friend of a friend need to know about you?
8 Responses
1:50 pm
Looks good – though, I would recommend providing an embed link (can it be embedded?). Many videos now-a-days are shared via embedding, not links. People don’t want to have to click off their current site and goto a different site to see some media content.
5:43 pm
We’re working on that, Doug. We’re just trying to get things going as quickly as possible.
One problem with embedding this presentation is the level of detail in the images – they wouldn’t translate well to a smaller player.
Colin
1:44 pm
Okay – it’s on YouTube now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7gWEgHeXcA
6:14 pm
I think this is an excellent video. Most people aren’t aware of how their information is being used and passed around and this video highlights the web of information in a simple to understand way. It’s a nice look into the inner workings of social networking sites.
I’m mostly wondering how many people will actually see this video…stumble across it versus knowing it’s out there and searching for it. Those who are concerned about their privacy may already be aware of privacy issues and social networking sites, but those people who are unconcerned/uninformed would be less likely to search for information about their privacy and social networking sites. Those are the people you want to target most.
But it is nice to see the federal government looking outside its sites to spread information.
4:35 pm
Excellent work! Very informative.
4:16 pm
Nobody here sees the irony in using flash to show content about protecting your privacy?
4:20 am
[...] This link will take you to a video that asks, “what would you want a friend of a friend of a friend to know about you?” As the commissioner points out, joining a social network is our personal choice, “but we would hope that people would take a minute to think about their choices – and how much information they end up handing over to corporations, advertisers and marketing companies.” Fair call. The video is here. [...]
1:07 pm
[...] ought to start posting images in my on-line album again. Shutting down this line of thought was a post by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner revealing something I should have already known. It [...]