Children’s Privacy

If you have chil­dren, or an interest in pri­vacy, spend the time and watch the video of Pro­fess­or Valer­ie Steeves dis­cuss­ing how chil­dren’s web sites mon­it­or their vis­its. It’s scary. [Link from Michael’s Geist’s blog.]

After see­ing this, I won­der why the schools here don’t teach more about pri­vacy. When we were last in Aus­tralia, vis­it­ing friends, I noticed that one friend, whose chil­dren are roughly the same age as mine, had two pieces of paper with hand­prints on the fridge. It turns out they are told about pri­vacy in school, start­ing at age 5, and these hand­prints are remind­ers of that injunc­tion about pri­vacy. The word­ing on the paper was instructive. 

Respect Pri­vacy

Name ___ is special

Every hand­print is unique. Per­son­al inform­a­tion is worth tak­ing care of. Keep this hand­print in a safe place.

Find out more at www.privacy.vic.gov.au.

Simple, as befits young chil­dren, and the hand­print with its tact­ile mes­sage and remind­er of a child’s unique­ness struck me as a good idea. We need to be more aware of pri­vacy and its import­ance in gen­er­al, and espe­cially for those not yet old enough to make their own informed decisions.