At what age should kids be on social media? Should they be on it at all? If they aren’t, will they be social pariahs? Should parents monitor their conversations? Do parental controls work?  Navigating social media as a parent — not to mention a child — is not easy. Using social media platforms is still […]

A lawyer working with Concerned Citizens of Baynes Sound (CCOBS) — a group of Union Bay residents who came together to oppose a shipbreaking operation run by a company called Deep Water Recovery — says the government could easily shut down the ship dismantling activities if they wanted to. The site at 5084 Island Hwy. […]

U.S. antitrust enforcers have decided to investigate the roles Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI have played in the artificial intelligence boom, according to people familiar with the pending actions.  The Department of Justice will launch an investigation of chipmaker Nvidia, while the Federal Trade Commission will scrutinize close business partners Microsoft and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, according to […]

More than 70,000 children are seeking support through the Ontario Autism Program, but fewer than 15,000 of them are getting funding for core therapies, the province’s Financial Accountability Office said in a report Wednesday. The Progressive Conservative government has more than doubled the budget for the Ontario Autism Program, now at $720 million, but that […]

The ransomware business is booming in Canada. Recent victims have included large corporations such as retailer London Drugs, as well as the City of Hamilton, Ont., and the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. But the criminals who sometimes brag of their attacks on the so-called dark web don’t seem fussy about their victims, based on […]

Three key agencies lacked the “capacity and tools” to effectively protect Canadians from cyberattacks and tackle the growing threat of online crime, the federal spending watchdog has found. In a report released Tuesday, Auditor General Karen Hogan describes breakdowns in response, co-ordination, enforcement, tracking, and analysis between and across the organizations. Hogan’s review looked at […]

Alberta’s energy minister is undermining the independence of its energy regulator, one of several examples of the United Conservative Party government extending its grasp into supposedly arm’s-length public agencies, observers say. “We’ve been seeing this consistent pattern of political interference in public agencies,” said Nagwan Al-Guneid, energy and climate critic for the New Democrat Opposition. […]

The privacy commissioners of Canada and British Columbia have launched an investigation into a Victoria-based company that performs background checks on tenants and others. They say in a joint statement that Certn is being assessed to make sure it complies with the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and B.C.’s Personal Information Protection […]

Twenty-two British Columbia government email inboxes with sensitive personal information on 19 employees may have been accessed during a cyber attack on the province’s networks, the minister of public safety said on Monday. Mike Farnworth said there’s no indication the general public’s information was compromised and investigators have not identified any misuse of the information […]

The Ombudsman of Ontario has concluded Springwater Township council did nothing wrong when it held a closed-session meeting on May 3, 2023. According to the report, which will be presented to council on Wednesday during its meeting, provincial ombudsman Paul Dubé received complaints alleging that council’s discussion of a rainbow crosswalk project, the hiring process […]

The coming Paris Olympics and other major sporting events are tempting targets for cybercriminals and hacktivists looking to fatten their wallets, promote causes or pilfer secrets, federal security officials warn. A Canadian Centre for Cyber Security bulletin published Friday says criminals operating online will very likely try to extort organizations involved in — or located […]

The federal justice minister said Wednesday the government’s online harms bill includes measures to protect children using age-appropriate web design. Arif Virani is touting that bill as a better solution to concerns about children accessing sexually explicit material online, versus a Senate bill currently making its way through the debate process. The Senate bill would […]