I would say a few things. One is that we've issued a declaration with my federal, provincial and territorial colleagues called “Putting best interests of young people at the forefront of privacy and access to personal information”. It's available on our website. We give a number of recommendations and expectations for organizations about making sure that they're protecting children and the best interests of the child and that they're treating their information appropriately.
In terms of what people should do—and that's something we've said in our data-scraping statement with my international colleagues—ask yourself if you are comfortable sharing this much information. Do you know enough about the settings and the protections that are there? Is this something you want to potentially see forever?
In Bill C-27, there's a new proposed section to dispose of information, especially for minors. That's good, but whenever you're putting a picture of your children online, ask yourself if you want to take the risk. Have you put the privacy settings in a strong enough way? Are you sharing this with the whole world? If you don't understand enough about what the organization is doing and you find its privacy policy to be complex, I always encourage everyone to ask the organization.
Ask for more information. When stores ask for your birthday, ask them why they want to know your birthday when you're buying jewellery or any kind of item. Why do they need that information?
It's getting that reflex of not just saying, “Yes, sure, I'll give it to you.”