Canada's privacy watchdog said Thursday many Canadians don't know how closely companies are tracking their online activities - nor are they providing informed consent.

"We have some serious concerns about online tracking, profiling and targeting - and the fact that many Canadians don't know what's happening behind their computer screens, let alone agree to it. Children - who are going online at younger and younger ages - are even less likely to understand," Jennifer Stoddart told a privacy symposium in Toronto, where she released the final report of public consultations held last year on privacy issues in the online world.

Stoddart looked at the rich trail of data scooped up by companies and marketers when people browse the Internet, use social networking sites or use geolocation functions on mobile devices.

In addition to calling companies to be more upfront with their customers about their practices, her report also flags issues with the growing popularity of "cloud computing." By storing information and services on shared remote computers and accessed via the Internet or the "cloud," companies can reduce their storage requirements and costs.

But as Sony has discovered with the recent theft of personal information of over 100 million PlayStation network users and online gamers, there can be massive security risks. The Sony data breach came on the heels of an Amazon service outage last month when its cloud services were knocked off-line.

Noting that even smalland medium-sized enterprises are embracing cloud computing with varying levels of technological security, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's report calls for the development of strong standards to ensure the security of personal information stored or processed on cloud services.

The findings in the final report were drawn from the consultations, which included public events in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary, as well as 44 written submissions from industry, academics and advocates.

Many of the participants highlighted a specific challenge with obtaining meaningful consent, especially involving children.

"Online tracking, profiling and targeting is a highly complex environment in which to consider the appropriate type of consent. To begin, the ways in which data are collected, and the uses to which that data are put, are largely invisible to most users - and certainly more so to children. There are more players (e.g. websites, ad networks, data miners) involved, and the user may not know who those players are," the report states.

"Transparency and meaningfulness of consent are serious issues and they generated a great deal of discussion on the panels. It is perhaps easy to get lost in the issue of opt-in versus opt-out, but one issue that needs serious consideration is that of meaningfulness.

"Are the purposes and practices clear so that the consumer is giving meaningful consent? That is a question of fairness, as well as a requirement under the law - and it is one we think needs more focus."

In Canada, companies must abide by the privatesector privacy law, which came into effect in 2001.

During the consultations, most industry participants said the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Document Act can handle the emerging privacy issues involving new technologies.

But the report notes that many other participants and respondents said there were challenges, including defining what is personal information, determining the appropriate form of consent and implementing reasonable safeguards.