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An Ottawa-based Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) who is calling themselves Canada’s privacy watchdog has filed a complaint with privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart earlier this week about the “unnecessary and non-consensual use and disclosure of personal information” by Nexopia, an Edmonton-based social-networking site aimed at teens.
Nexopia.com, which has attracted over 1.2 million registered members, mainly in Wester Canada may be in violation of privacy concerns according to PIAC, who’s lawyer John Lawford says there should be different rules applied to sites who’s members are under 13.
“Our basic complaint is if you are going to treat it like a club, then keep it in the club,” he said Tuesday. “Especially for younger people because they don’t fully realize the consequences of what’s posted on a social-networking site.”
As part of their complaint, PIAC has outlined six ways that Nexopia violates Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, known as PIPEDA, and their largest concern is that profile information can be searched by users on the internet who might use a search engine such as Google or Microsoft’s Bing.
Nexopia users can upload a variety of information from age and interests, to e-mail addresses and photos, all of which then becomes searchable. Privacy settings can later be set to hide personal information, however, four details — username, sex, location and age — can never be changed or deleted.
“If you put your head to it, there has to be some kind of difference between someone who is 13 and 19 using a social-networking site and what they should or shouldn’t post,” Lawford said, pointing to the example of advertising. He noted that social-networking sites often feature ads about things such as gambling and weight loss — issues that youth shouldn’t be involved with.
In late 2009, privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart pursued Facebook to change their privacy settings and policies which I’m sure we’ll see impact many other social networks around the world.
Founder of Profectio of business sites which includes 
