On-line world of info: all about you

Last week, I got a phone call from a Wolfville landlady touched by a fraud artist from the African country of Benin; at least, that’s where the stamps came from on the bogus money order she received. The scam involved sending too much money to rent a local apartment.

The landlady was most amazed someone would go on the rental website the Acadia Students’ Union hosts to perpetrate a fraud, but RCMP Cst. Blair MacMurtery says the internet is an open door.

“Anytime that you offer anything for sale or rent on the worldwide web, you open yourself up to the possibility of fraud,” he says. “There are 10 or 15 variations, but they all send more money than required.”

Fortunately in this case, an alert RBC bank employee picked up the scam and the landlady did not send the supposedly excess cash to Africa.

It is hard to know if those who dabble on computers daily have any privacy. For example, the social-networking site Facebook allows a feature called memorialization that lets the family of deceased users keep their profile page online as a virtual tribute. That sure backfired for 15-year-old Shelby Breimer of Truro after her late mother, Helen's, account was hijacked by spammers. They attempted to use Helen’s site and medical history to peddle a colon cleanser.

Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act probably helped bring about the Nov. 5 launch of Google’s new privacy settings page, Dashboard. Users can delete all the personal information the internet giant is storing about them.

The millions of people who have signed up for Google's consumer services, like Gmail, alerts, YouTube and Picasa; can now log on and see all the personal data Google has stored about them.

According to a recent Globe & Mail article, there are others who are interested. The U.S. National Security Agency reportedly sucks up the equivalent of the contents of the Library of Congress every six to eight hours, every single day.

Social networking means many people live out loud in terms of personal information. Perhaps I’m old fashioned to admire reticence, but local entrepreneur Ron Leach also thinks like me. He is a partner in a recently-opened data centre in New Minas called Data Planet Information Services Inc. The firm offers a whole raft of technical services, including server hosting. What is fascinating is the impact of the U.S. Patriot Act and how it affects Canadians.

Leach says many of us are not aware of the provisions within The Patriot Act that allow access to our information.

“If you store data on a U.S. system, such as those offered by Google and Microsoft, the Dept. of Homeland Security can request a copy of all data held on those systems and it is illegal for the storage company to disclose that the data was released. This same policy applies to U.S. affiliate companies operating in Canada.”

The B.C. Government Employees Union fought over this several years ago, when that province issued a contract to an American data centre to manage its pension info. The union fought the contract on the basis the security of the data could not be guaranteed due to The Patriot Act. The union lost that fight.

“This issue affects many different aspects of our life. Think of all the records held by lawyers, doctors, politicians, financial planners, insurance brokers, credit agencies, addictions treatment facilities and mental health facilities,” Leach says.

The complexity of the post-modern world defies comprehension sometimes. I’m thankful for alternatives to the U.S. domination of our airwaves and server systems. There is obviously a kind of computer globalization we take as utterly for granted as our universal access to internet knowledge.

Being 100 per cent Canadian-owned, Leach says, doesn’t make his firm anti-American.

“We just feel strongly that Canadians should be aware of the issue and think seriously before using any online back-up systems.”