Data Privacy Week

By APCUG Administrator April 1, 2023

Data Privacy Week
Sponsored by the National Cyber Security Alliance
January 27-31, 2025

Become a champion and celebrate DPW! Champions represent those dedicated to empowering individuals and encouraging businesses to respect privacy, safeguard data and enable trust.

2025 Theme

You have the power to take charge of your data. This is why we are excited to celebrate Data Privacy Week 2025 with the theme: 

Take control of your data:

Your online activity creates a treasure trove of data. This data ranges from your interests and purchases to your online behaviors, and it is collected by websites, apps, devices, services, and companies all around the globe. This data can even include information about your physical self, like health data – think about how an app on your phone might count how many steps you take.

You cannot control how each little piece of data about you and your family is collected. However, you still have a right to data privacy. You can help manage your data with a few repeatable behaviors. Your data is valuable and you deserve to have a say!

Check out our resources below to better manage your personal information and make informed decisions about who receives your data.

About Data Privacy Week 

The goal of Data Privacy Week is to spread awareness about online privacy. We think data privacy should be a priority both for individuals and organizations. Our goal is twofold: we want to help citizens understand that they have the power to manage their data and we want to help organizations understand why it is important that they respect their users’ data.

Why Is Data Privacy Week Important? 

Our data is collected everyday — your computer, smartphone, and pretty much every other internet-connected device gathers data, which might even include your wristwatch or car! But you often have some choices when it comes to how this data is collected, shared, and sold.

Personal data can be stored indefinably. Data can be used to make inferences about your socioeconomic status, demographic information, and preferences. Even seemingly innocuous information, such as your favorite restaurants or items you purchase online, can be used to make assumptions about you and your habits. Many companies have the opportunity to monitor the data of their users and consumers, and they sell the data for profit.

If this reality is sending chills down your spine, don’t fret! You can take steps to control how your data is shared. You can’t lock down all of your data — even if you stop using the internet, credit card companies record your purchases and the government knows your Social Security number. But you can take simple steps to manage it and take more control of who it is shared with. 

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Here are a few resources you might want to share with your members.

Data Privacy Week About Data Privacy Week, What is Data Privacy? Become a Champion, Respect Privacy, Take Control of Your Data, Manage Your Privacy Settings, How to Be a Data Snob, Past Data Privacy Week Videos.

Manage Your Privacy Settings – Stay Safe Online

FTC – Protecting Consumer Privacy and Security

Consumer Information Blog | FTC Consumer Information

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DATA PRIVACY WEEK: PRIVACY ADVICE –Two-to-five-minute security videos hosted by Lisa Plagueimeier, Executive Direction, National Cybersecurity Alliance, with Consumer Reports, Mozilla, etc. representatives.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7QHbjPSF0r4Sx1R_znbzDVfGds5oq7_Z

DATA PRIVACY WEEK — HACKERS: THE NEW GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE – Hackers are like ghosts in the machine – they make their presence known when they want to. Although some malware can be visible (such as ransomware), most cyber threats work invisibly. This is why it’s so important to learn how to spot these ghosts. Also, know what you can do alone to protect yourself against them. Cyber threats are on the rise, which has brought a new level of dangers for people everywhere. Learning what to look out for when it comes to cyber threats will help you stay safe in today’s digital world. Read on to find out more! https://techgenix.com/hackers-the-new-ghosts-in-the-machine/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=tgnewsletter&utm_campaign=tgweekly-220125&hq_e=el&hq_m=2195366&hq_l=12&hq_v=de747fd81f

DATA PRIVACY WEEK — FREE APPS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE DOWNLOADING – There are tons of free apps available for Android and Apple users worldwide. But what you might not know is whether or not these apps are safe to use. We’ll discuss all the pros and cons of free apps and how to avoid malware threats when downloading them. Free apps are a great way to get the app you want without paying for it. But not all free apps are safe, so before downloading any app, make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. Free apps offer a fantastic array of benefits over paid versions, but they also have significant risks. Free apps have many advantages and disadvantages when compared with their paid counterparts. Saving money is always better than not being free unless there’s malware involved!
https://techgenix.com/free-apps-what-you-need-to-know-before-downloading/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=tgnewsletter&utm_campaign=tgweekly-220125&hq_e=el&hq_m=2195366&hq_l=8&hq_v=de747fd81f

DATA PRIVACY WEEK: WHY YOUR “UNIMPORTANT” ACCOUNTS MATTER, Even the unimportant ones can cause you problems, Leo Notenboom – One of the pushbacks I get when I reiterate the importance of securing your online accounts relates to accounts you might consider “unimportant”. You may feel that extra security measures are more hassle than they’re worth. As a result, you might use a poor password, re-use a password, or fail to set up recovery mechanisms. My concern is twofold. First, accounts often become more important over time. Second, a breach of even a so-called “unimportant” account can still cause you massive headaches.  https://askleo.com/why-that-unimportant-accounts-matter/

DATA PRIVACY WEEK: TAX SCAM EMAILS ARE ALIVE AND WELL AS US TAX SEASON STARTS – Many countries have taxation forms with names that have entered the general vocabulary, notably the abbreviations of documents that employers are obliged to provide to their staff to show how much money they were paid – and, most importantly, how much tax was already withheld and paid in on the employee’s behalf. Here at Naked Security, we know the names of these forms, amongst numerous others, because they often show up in tax scam emails, presumably to give those messages an air of realism. Anyway, given that it’s the last week in January, and thus that US tax filing season is about to get underway, we weren’t surprised to receive a tax-related scam email today, and to see the W-2 form mentioned explicitly. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2022/01/25/tax-scam-emails-are-alive-and-well-as-us-tax-season-starts/

DATA PRIVACY WEEK: WHY YOU SHOULD DELETE YOUR YOUTUBE HISTORY OFTEN (AND HOW TO DO IT) – Like many social media apps designed to suck you in, Google uses what it knows about you—including your YouTube watch history—to serve you an endless stream of content that it thinks will hold your interest. If you have hours to go down a rabbit hole of comedy or cute animals, that might be fine.

But let’s say you searched for something you’d like to keep private, and the algorithm is now serving you a lot of content on that topic. Or you had to watch a video for school or work, and the videos you actually care about are being drowned out by something extremely boring.

Good news: You can delete some or all of your YouTube watch history to better curate your recommended video feed. Here’s more on why you should do it often—and how to do it in a few quick steps.
https://lifehacker.com/why-you-should-delete-your-youtube-history-often-and-h-1848414082?utm_source=lifehacker_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2022-01-25

Why You Should Delete Your YouTube History Often (and How to Do It) (lifehacker.com)

DATA PRIVACY WEEK: HOW TO DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING AMAZON KNOWS ABOUT YOU (IT’S A LOT) – Here’s a fun thought experiment; picture the amount of personal data you think tech companies keep on you. Now, realize it’s actually way more than that (hmm, maybe this isn’t that fun). Even as privacy and security become more talked about in consumer tech, the companies behind our favorite products are collecting more and more of our data. How much? Well, if you want to know the information, say, Amazon has on you, there is a way to find out. And it’s a lot. https://lifehacker.com/how-to-download-everything-amazon-knows-about-you-its-1848412242?utm_source=lifehacker_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2022-01-25

How to Download Everything Amazon Knows About You (It’s a Lot) (lifehacker.com)

DATA PRIVACY WEEK: 200 BAD PASSWORDS – Is your password on the list of the 200 most commonly used passwords? The folks at Nord Pass put out a list of which passwords turn up most often on the hacked list. Hacked passwords. Not  surprisingly there are variations on the old 123456 and password. (password1 is still quite popular.) But you might be surprised to see iLoveYou and superman on the list. Qwerty is still very popular for those folks who don’t like to move too far around the keyboard, but so is qazwsx and 1qaz2wsx. 200 Bad Passwords – Cyn Mackley

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