Data privacy is the protection of personal data from those who should not have access to it and the ability of individuals to determine who can access their personal information.
What is data privacy?
Data privacy generally means the ability of a person to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent personal information about them is shared with or communicated to others. This personal information can be one’s name, location, contact information, or online or real-world behavior. Just as someone may wish to exclude people from a private conversation, many online users want to control or prevent certain types of personal data collection.
As Internet usage has increased over the years, so has the importance of data privacy. Websites, applications, and social media platforms often need to collect and store personal data about users to provide services. However, some applications and platforms may exceed users’ data collection and usage expectations, leaving users with less privacy than they realized. Other apps and platforms may not place adequate safeguards around the data they collect, which can result in a data breach that compromises user privacy.
Why is data privacy important?
Privacy is considered a fundamental human right in many jurisdictions, and data protection laws exist to guard that right. Data privacy is also important because for individuals to be willing to engage online, they have to trust that their personal data will be handled with care. Organizations use data protection practices to demonstrate to their customers and users that they can be trusted with their personal data.
Personal data can be misused in several ways if it is not kept private or if people can’t control how their information is used:
- Criminals can use personal data to defraud or harass users.
- Entities may sell personal data to advertisers or other outside parties without user consent, resulting in users receiving unwanted marketing or advertising.
- When a person’s activities are tracked and monitored, this may restrict their ability to express themselves freely, especially under repressive governments.
For individuals, any of these outcomes can be harmful. These outcomes can irreparably harm a business’s reputation and result in fines, sanctions, and other legal consequences.
In addition to the real-world implications of privacy infringements, many people and countries hold that privacy has intrinsic value: that privacy is a human right fundamental to a free society, like the right to free speech.
What are the laws that govern data privacy?
As technological advances have improved data collection and surveillance capabilities, governments worldwide have started passing laws regulating what kind of data can be collected about users, how that data can be used, and how data should be stored and protected. Some of the most essential regulatory privacy frameworks to know include:
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Regulates how the personal data of European Union (EU) data subjects, meaning individuals, can be collected, stored, and processed, and gives data subjects rights to control their data (including a right to be forgotten).
- National data protection laws: Many countries, such as Canada, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and others, have comprehensive data protection laws in some form. Some, like Brazil’s General Law for the Protection of Personal Data and the UK’s Data Protection Act, are quite similar to the GDPR.
- California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): Requires that consumers be made aware of what personal data is collected and gives consumers control over their personal data, including a right to tell organizations not to sell their personal data.
There are also industry-specific privacy guidelines in some countries: for instance, in the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) governs how personal healthcare data should be handled.
However, many privacy advocates argue that individuals still do not have sufficient control over what happens to their personal data. Governments around the world may pass additional data privacy laws in the future.
What are Fair Information Practices?
Many existing data protection laws are based on foundational privacy principles and practices, such as those in the Fair Information Practices. The Fair Information Practices are a set of guidelines for data collection and usage. These guidelines were first proposed by an advisory committee to the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 1973. They were later adopted by the International Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in its Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data.
The Fair Information Practices are:
- Collection limitation: There should be limits to how much personal data can be collected
- Data quality: Personal data, when collected, should be accurate and related to the purpose it is being used for
- Purpose specification: The use of personal data should be specified
- Use limitation: Data should not be used for purposes other than what was specified
- Security safeguards: Data should be kept secure
- Openness: Personal data collection and usage should not be kept secret from individuals
- Individual participation: Individuals have several rights, including the right to know who has their data, to have their data communicated to them, to know why a request for their data is denied, and to have their personal data corrected or erased
- Accountability: Anyone who collects data should be held accountable for implementing these principles
What are some of the challenges users face when protecting their online privacy?
Online tracking: User behavior is regularly tracked online. Cookies often record a user’s activities, and while most countries require websites to alert users of cookie usage, users may not be aware of to what degree cookies are recording their activities.
Losing control of data: With so many online services in everyday use, individuals may not be aware of how their data is being shared beyond the websites with which they interact online, and they may not have a say over what happens to their data.
Lack of transparency: To use web applications, users often have to provide personal data like their name, email, phone number, or location; meanwhile, the privacy policies associated with those applications may be dense and difficult to understand.
Social media: It is easier than ever to find someone online using social media platforms, and social media posts may reveal more personal information than users realize. In addition, social media platforms often collect more data than users know.
Cybercrime: Many attackers try to steal user data to commit fraud, compromise secure systems, or sell it on underground markets to parties who will use the data for malicious purposes. Some attackers use phishing attacks to trick users into revealing personal information; others attempt to compromise companies’ internal systems containing personal data.
What are some of the challenges businesses face when protecting user privacy?
Communication: Organizations sometimes struggle to communicate clearly to their users what personal data they collect and how they use it.
Cybercrime: Attackers target individuals and organizations that collect and store data about those users. In addition, as more aspects of a business become Internet-connected, the attack surface increases.
Data breaches: A data breach can lead to a massive violation of user privacy if personal details are leaked, and attackers continue to refine the techniques they use to cause these breaches.
Insider threats: Internal employees or contractors might inappropriately access data if it is not adequately protected.
What are some of the most critical technologies for data privacy?
- Encryption is a way to conceal information by scrambling it to appear as random data. Only parties with the encryption key can unscramble the information.
- Access control ensures that only authorized parties access systems and data. Access control can be combined with data loss prevention (DLP) to stop sensitive data from leaving the network.
- Two-factor authentication is one of the most critical technologies for regular users, making it far harder for attackers to gain unauthorized access to personal accounts.
These are just some technologies available today that can protect user privacy and keep data more secure. However, technology alone is not sufficient to protect data privacy.
