Posted on the 29th January 2009
Wednesday January 28 was Data Privacy Day in the U.S, Canada and 27 European countries, a holiday meant to raise awareness of how personal information is treated online.
As a popular holiday, it probably ranks up there with National Kazoo Day, also celebrated on January 28. The difference is that the U.S. Congress has for the last two years officially recognized Data Privacy Day.
Just how much official awareness do people need considering October is already Cyber Security Awareness Month?
Lots, it turns out. Most people still don't understand what happens to the information they provide online, says Ari Schwartz, Vice President of the Centre for Democracy and Technology. "Businesses are sharing information with parties that you think they wouldn't share it with," he says. He cites Facebook's "Beacon" system that shared information about people's purchases with their friends, but adds that businesses trade more prosaic information all the time.
In order to draw attention to these issues, organisations across the U.S. held a range of events on Wednesday, including shredding sessions and panel discussions on Internet technology and ways to protect oneself from identity theft.
Unfortunately, there's very little individuals can do to protect their information that isn't cumbersome and impractical, says Schwartz. He compares it to trying to recycle plastic and glass in the days when you had to drive to specialized recycling centres. But over time, enough awareness was raised that curbside recycling became the norm. That's the kind of movement Data Privacy Day is meant to provoke.
The first Data Privacy Day in 2008 didn't do the trick, at least when judged by the behaviour of businesses and other organisations that collect and store information about customers and employees. In 2008, organisations reported 656 incidents where sensitive personal information was accessed by an unauthorized party, according to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Centre, up from 446 such breaches in 2007.
Original article: Happy Data Privacy Day! from The Wall Street Journal
