What is Data Privacy Day (DPD) all about?

You only need to look at data privacy breaches that have occurred over the last ten years to realise just how vulnerable your personal information is online. In 2013, Yahoo suffered the biggest data privacy breach of all time (and, perhaps, the biggest that will ever occur) when hackers wandered away with 3 billion Yahoo account records. Then, as if it were all part of a huge joke, they suffered another data breach in 2014 when hackers stole data from 500 million accounts.

Yahoo isn’t alone, of course. First American Financial Corp had 885 million accounts stolen in 2019 and Facebook had 540 million stolen in 2019. You might also remember eBay’s 2014 data breach when 145 million user accounts were compromised. If this tells us anything, it is that as end-users (givers of information) and businesses (handlers of information) we need to take data privacy seriously and never take for granted the security of the information we give.

Hence, the importance of Data Privacy Day. 

Data Privacy Day

Data Privacy Day was launched in 2007 by the Council of Europe. It is held on January 28 each year and is promoted by some of the world’s largest organisations to raise awareness and promote privacy and data protection best practices. The day itself is also a commemoration of the signing of Convention 108 on January 28, 1981. Convention 108 was the first personal data protection convention ever, a legally-binding international treaty (among those who signed up) to protect privacy and data which would apply to handlers and processors of information.

How can I take part?

There are several ways you can take part if you are interested:

1. Sign up to become a Data Privacy Day Champion with Stay Safe Online. Anyone can become a Champion to officialise their support.

2. Share the day on social media. Whether you use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or another social media platform, you can use the hashtag #dataprivacyday to increase the reach and power of your update.

3. Share a useful data protection article with your friends and family. Stay Safe Online has published privacy tips for parents here. For businesses, we recommend brushing up on the principles of data protection here.

How should I protect my privacy?

There are several ways you can help protect your data online:

1. Use a password manager so you can utilise different strong passwords across all your accounts without forgetting them.

2. Install anti-virus and anti-malware software on your computer to protect yourself from hackers and scams.

3. Make your social media profiles private and accessible only to family and friends. Be careful who you add and verify unknown people.

4. Turn off location tracking on your smartphone and computer, except for essential apps like Maps. Unless you need directions or an app needs to know your location, there is no need to share your location.

5. Keep your computer updated and make sure you install updates periodically so you can stay ahead of operating system vulnerabilities.

6. Check for the padlock symbol on your web browser whenever you share your personal information online. A padlock symbol means a site has an SSL certificate to encrypt your connection with it. Another way to tell if a site is secured with an SSL is if it starts with https – the ‘s’ stands for secure.