This is the 51st episode of the Shared Security Podcast sponsored by Security Perspectives – Your Source for Tailored Security Awareness Training and Assessment Solutions. This episode was hosted by Tom Eston and Scott Wright with special interview guest Andrew Patrick from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) of Canada. This episode was recorded February 10, 2016. Below are the show notes, commentary, links to articles and news mentioned in the podcast:
Online Behavioral Advertising – An interview with Andrew Patrick from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) of Canada
Today, Scott had a great discussion with Andrew Patrick regarding OBA, or what some listeners might know as “Tracking Ads”. We discussed why the OPC has in interest in OBA, and how it relates to Canadian privacy legislation. We also looked at one of the recent cases of OBA that the OPC was involved in, where a person complained that sensitive health information from searches and web surfing over time was being used to present ads for products to them across many different websites, many of which were not related in any way to the ads being served.
Here are some interesting and related articles from the OPC regarding OBA that are worth reading:
- A policy position on OBA and the situations when opt-out consent may be appropriate.
- A report of an investigation the OPC did into Google’s OBA practices related to a health-related device.
- A recent follow up research report where the OPC surveyed OBA practices across a number of leading Canadian websites.
Thanks to Andrew Patrick and the Privacy Commissioner for making their time and resources available to us on the Shared Security Podcast. It is really encouraging to see the Canadian Government taking such an active role in helping citizens protect their privacy and personal information.
Security Issues with Connected Toys
New technology also comes with great responsibility…even more so if it concerns children. More “smart” toys are being found with security vulnerabilities that could lead to personal inforamtion about children being exposed. In this case the app used with the Fisher Price “Smart Bear” had security vulnerabilities that if exploited could steal a child’s name, birthdate and gender, along with other data. Fortunately, Fisher Price quickly fixed the issue.
-Tom
15 Dangerous Apps Every Parent Should Know About
If you’re a parent with teens you should definitely check out this document of the 15 most “dangerous” mobile apps your teens may be using. I don’t think dangerous is the right word as some of these apps have legitimate purposes. However, we all know kids will use apps like these for things like sexting and other activity that parents need to be monitoring for. Give this document a read…you might not be aware of some of these apps and as a parent it’s good to be as educated as possible about these apps. Also, this document touched a little on this but there are lots of apps that look legitimate but in fact will “hide” photos and videos inside of them. The most popular with teens seem to be “Calculator +” applications (like this one in the iTunes store). The lesson here is to check out all the apps your teen has on their mobile device and investigate their usage.
-Tom
Facebook-prowling predator arrested after mother helps police
This is a good article about how a parent did some investigating of their child’s friends list on Facebook and found a convicted sex offender. There are also some rules for parents (and teens) in the article that are good to review. We talk about these same “social media” rules in many of our podcast episodes.
-Tom
Connected devices quietly mine our data, privacy experts say (Scott was featured in this article)
The real message here is that you should realize that we are far from over-reacting to these kinds of risks, and in the big picture, we all need to watch the trends to understand the risks.
-Scott
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