OTTAWA — The government “fell short” and “should have been more prudent” in preventing users’ personal information from being shared with third parties as they interacted with a much-maligned online electoral reform survey, Canada’s privacy commissioner has found. MyDemocracy.ca employed third-party scripts that could disclose users’ personal information to Facebook without their consent as soon as they loaded the website, according to the commissioner’s investigation. Therrien’s report rebukes PCO for not assessing privacy concerns ahead of time. “Given the nature of the MyDemocracy initiative and the personal information collected, PCO fell short of our expectations,” it says. It also submitted third-party sites such as Facebook “only received common web transaction data,” and noted Facebook users agree to its terms of service.

Source: National Post September 21, 2017 16:18 UTC