Since 1948, privacy has been defined as a fundamental human right recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights and in many other international and regional treaties. But that is not the case in Canada, where privacy interests are merely “essential to…

Because Edtech Without Integrity is Fraud After two decades in information security, I was a latecomer to the edtech party back in 2016 and what I found was a land rush for the last frontier of intangible assets: children’s personal data. To be clear, 2016 was a watershed year in…

Valentine’s Day 2018 marked the moment I learned that the fear of public embarrassment could motivate even a Canadian public school board to use disinformation and intimidation tactics to cover up a security breach. Caused by the botched deployment of a cloud-based ‘educational technology’ (“edtech”) system and plagued from the…

A few times a year, we are struck by statements, images and speeches that have not stood the test of time due to changes in public discourse, the evolution of critical thinking and just plain modern trends. One speech that has aged well is Robert Mueller’s 2011 discourse for the…

…or are they far more prevalent and significant than some would have you believe? That depends. What do we mean by “data breach”? According to the bastion of impartiality that is Wikipedia.com, it is defined as: A data breach is the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential information…

3 Cardinal Rules to Follow When Avoiding Responsibility for Cybersecurity Incidents. First and foremost, let it age for a month after discovery. It is important to appreciate that data breaches get better with age, so give it time before you get around to pen some well turned phrases. That was a bonus tip. It almost goes without saying that the sooner…

By simply reading this page, you may be inadvertently sharing some info with faceless companies (other than Medium.com). What gives? A quick look at some of the gremlins that show up as being blocked in my browser confirms it: DataDogHQ, Optimizely, Parse.ly and Google Analytics are just a few of…

How Spammers Wag The Dog By Exploiting Telus’ New Online Community, the Neighbourhood Imagine you were a spammer looking for your next mark. …

Or how companies collect and share our information before even asking for it. Let’s get one thing out of the way. You must never, ever, ever surf the Web unprotected. You would not walk into a store if you had to fill out detailed application forms from strangers, so why…