Informational privacy

Information privacy, or data privacy (or data protection), is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them.

Privacy concerns exist wherever personally identifiable information or other sensitive information is collected, stored, used, and finally destroyed or deleted – in digital form or otherwise. Improper or non-existent disclosure control can be the root cause for privacy issues. Data privacy issues may arise in response to information from a wide range of sources, such as:

The challenge of data privacy is to utilize data while protecting individual's privacy preferences and their personally identifiable information. The fields of computer security, data security, and information security design and utilize software, hardware, and human resources to address this issue. Since the laws and regulations related to Privacy and Data Protection are constantly changing, it is important to keep abreast of any changes in the law and to continually reassess compliance with data privacy and security regulations.

Various types of personal information often come under privacy concerns.

The ability to control the information one reveals about oneself over the Internet, and who can access that information, has become a growing concern. These concerns include whether email can be stored or read by third parties without consent, or whether third parties can continue to track the websites that someone has visited. Another concern is if the websites that are visited can collect, store, and possibly share personally identifiable information about users.

The advent of various search engines and the use of data mining created a capability for data about individuals to be collected and combined from a wide variety of sources very easily. The FTC has provided a set of guidelines that represent widely accepted concepts concerning fair information practices in an electronic marketplace called the Fair Information Practice Principles.

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