Find out what Twitter, Facebook and others say about your privacy

What do Tumblr, LinkedIn or MySpace say to third parties about what personal information of yours they’ll share? A website recently launched by University of Victoria researchers (www.catsmi.ca/ ) helps Canadians get smart about their personal privacy and how it is being used by social media providers.

“This website is very accessible to the public and it’s comprehensive, with 24 social media providers listed so the public can do a side-by-side comparison of each company’s privacy beliefs,” says researcher Adam Molnar, UVic PhD candidate in Political Science.

The Canadian Access To Social Media Information (CATSMI) Project, led by Dr. Colin Bennett, Chris Parsons (PhD candidate in Political Science) and Molnar, analyzed the practices of 24 major social networking sites to make it clear to Canadians how their personal information might be accessed by corporations, by police, and by citizens themselves.

The idea behind the year-long research project is that the evolution of a more “social web” poses significant challenges to theories of informational privacy as well as to the Canadian legal system.

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