Canadian Privacy Law Blog: The future of privacy on the internet

Canadian Privacy Law Blog: The future of privacy on the internet

Did you know 4.0

Military Recruiters Sharing Information About Your Kids Without Permission

The Department of Defense is maintaining a "Joint Advertising and Market Research Studies" Recruiting Database of over 30 million Americans between 16 and 25 years old. Huge exemptions to federal privacy laws leave it wide open for the DOD to disclose your kid's personal information without your permission! Go to the EPIC website for more information on the DOD Recruiting Database. If that's not enough, recruiters are at your child's school and recruiting your children without your permission. You have to opt out to keep them from actively recruiting your child. At my high school we had a recruiting station in one corner of the library with lots of pamphlets and brochures and once in a while a member of one of distinguished members of our Armed Services would be available to talk to any kid who was interested. I have absolutely no problem with that, What I do have a problem with is situations like the one described on MotherJones.Com. Where a young man was aggressively targeted by recruiters possessing information that he did not give them. I support all of our men and women in our Armed Forces and believe that military experience can be invaluable to many young people, but whatever happened to the old fashioned way of recruiting where interested kids sought out the recruiter? 2 of my own children have or are considering military service but I will be damned if I want some specially trained headhunter armed with insider information strong arming any of my kids into service. Remember, ours is a volunteer military.

Links
http://privacy.org/archives/003140.html
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/few-good-kids
http://epic.org/privacy/student/doddatabase.html

Is Facebook Fan Check a Virus or a Hoax

There is currently a scare going around on Facebook and in emails stating that a Facebook application titled "Fan Check" is actually a virus that will activate after 48 hours even if you were tagged in a photo on someone else's profile. While the jury is still out on whether Fan Check is actually malicious, the greater risk comes from doing a search on the phrase '"Facebook Fan Check Virus" as you might be directed to a website containing fake antivirus software that will actually install a real virus or otherwise try to trick you out of your money. For an example of one of these sites watch the video below.



According to an article on Mashable the Fan Check app is most likely just a broken application that wont work because it violates Facebook's policies. Your safest bet is to stay away from Fan Check or any other application that claims that it can tell who's been viewing your profile, and definitely DO NOT search for “Fan Check Facebook virus”. If you are concerned that you have a virus or spyware scan your computer with trusted software. Do not install or scan your computer with any software that you are not familiar with or that you have not checked out thoroughly. Personally I use Spybot S&D, Adaware, and AVG Antivirus,