Privacy Today

January 28th, 2010
by Nicole

When I was a kid, my definition of privacy was keeping my diary hidden from my brother. I didn’t think much about the value of my personal information, like my home address or phone number, and I didn’t have any passwords to keep safe.

My twelve-year-old niece already has a much more complex understanding of privacy than I did at her age, and she’ll need that as she begins to use social networking sites, smart cell phones, and the latest interactive games and technologies.

Because the notion of privacy is changing for everyone, the FTC is hosting a series of privacy roundtables to explore the privacy challenges posed by 21st century technology and business practices. The goal of the roundtables is to determine how best to protect privacy while supporting the beneficial uses of these new technologies.

It’s quite appropriate that we are hosting the second roundtable today, January 28, which is recognized as Data Privacy Day in the U.S., Canada and 27 European countries. To learn more about Data Privacy Day and to find resources to help you better protect your privacy, visit DataPrivacyDay.org.

One goal of Data Privacy Day is to promote privacy awareness among teens and young adults, and one resource that can help is Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids about Being Online. It’s a guide that provides practical tips to help adults help kids navigate the online world – whether they’re dealing with social networking and cyberbullying or sexting and file-sharing. 

For more tips about how you can protect your privacy and stay safe online, visit OnGuardOnline.gov, where you can play games, watch videos, and read more about social networking sites, phishing, and kids’ privacy.

Happy Data Privacy Day!

Tags: children, data, identity theft, kids, privacy, teaching

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 1:26 pm and is filed under For Kids, Identity Theft and Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.