Canadian Privacy Commissioner Has Stern Words for Youth Online
Just a few months after calling on Facebook to make substantial changes to its privacy policies or face legal action, Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart is back in the news with a stern warning for Canadian students.
In her annual report on private-sector privacy law, presented to Parliament this afternoon, Stoddart said, ”Many young people are choosing to open their lives in ways their parents would have thought impossible and their grandparents unthinkable. Their lives play out on a public stage of their own design as they strive for visibility, connectedness and knowledge.” Stoddart went on to say that ”putting so much of their personal information out into the open can also . . . leave an enduring trail of embarrassing moments that could haunt them in future.”
Here at the ReputationDefender Blog, we’d like to take a minute to give kudos to Commissioner Stoddart for her frank, yet practical wisdom. As ReputationDefender CEO Michael Fertik has remarked numerous times, people need to begin thinking about what they post online as if it were a tattoo. Will you feel okay about it five years down the road? 10 years? 20 years? Taking proactive measures to protect your reputation online now will pay tremendous dividends in the future.
