Data privacy
Data privacy is a part of data security which deals with monitoring duty, notice and data handling. Data is one of the most important resource or property which is owned by a company. Transparency in this data, accepted by the privacy policies is most important factor in creating or building trust and responsibility with the members, customers or the clients who expect privacy. Every government make rules and regulation for data privacy or for storing data of an individual. Same goes for the Australian government who have made Australian Privacy Principle(APPS) included in Privacy Act 1988. These principles are applied on some private sector organizations and most government agencies.
Privacy commitment is often referring to as leadership commitment and is considered to be the basis of good privacy governance. That means you must be enterprising or energetic in building, implementing, and continuing privacy processes. Privacy of individual includes protection of its personal information, which is the most precious and valuable asset in business. It includes your name, address, number, bank account, email, and much more. It results in the building of trust and confidence in your organization. A reputation will be built for having reliable and robust privacy policies or commitments.
Although the Australian government has made privacy principles which protect the personal information of its citizens and businesses but then also some of the information are releasing, and privacy is established but is not maintained. Here a question arises that if the government is providing privacy later how would all information or data is released? This is not only because of government lacking, but an individual and businesses are also playing an essential role in this spreading or releasing of data. Somewhere the government may seem lack in assuring data privacy to its citizens, somewhere individuals are embedding so much of extra and personal information on social media through which hackers are finding an easy way to access and steal all those data. On the other hand, through different businesses, personal and essential data is spreading, and companies are having direct access to an individual’s data, which is not providing security to one’s data.
Let us first talk about an individual who have massive data on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, which is providing a platform where an individual is inducting its personal information. This information is becoming available online and put user’s information in front of discussion and reduces the ability of the database to store such personal information safely. Users profile become available; one’s information is displayed to others via the internet and becomes a point of discussion for privacy concerns.
Some of the features or applications which invite costumers or user to take part in messages, photos, personal applications, contact numbers and much more which become venue or best place for others to get entrance and access to one’s private or personal information. Internet is becoming an open door for participation and collaboration for the spread of personal information. There is also the question arise that who should be held responsible for lacking user privacy? Why and how instead of having privacy on photos, personal information others are getting access to it?
Next, we come to government and see how they are contributing their role towards lacking data privacy. Government is not figuring out the cybercriminals who are responsible for accessing governments information, people, or business man’s information. They are not taking strict actions against cybercrimes. Criminals are using devices and phishing emails, which claims that it is sent by any legitimate organization to get people to give their personal information to them. They illegally possess one’s bank or credit card information. The data of government which is confidential is hacked by those hackers or criminals. Government cybercrime is the least common one but is most serious than all other, but it includes hacking of government websites, confidential emails, army or military websites. Citizens believe in government for their information like emails, access to their bank accounts or some other personal data but because of their lacking or setting of secure passwords can give a chance to these hackers to hack that information creating a threat to those individuals who use the internet. So what does this growth or enhancement of cybercrime mean for Australian government and agencies?
Let us put an eye over how business affects data privacy. We have seen several times that we get notification or advertisement of those things more which we search usually, we receive messages from different companies or different brand names, but we never gave our contact to them so how is that so? The answer is that by not having our data privacy individual’s personal information is released, and they get access to it for their business advertising or marketing. Most of the time this happens that if we are looking for dresses, food or something else, we are getting more applications or adds related to that this is helping business in understanding their target customers or audience. They deliver relevant messages and leverage an individual’s or customer’s data. This is because of not maintain data privacy which digs individual in the well of problems afterward.
These all factors (government, individual and businesses) are contributing directly towards the lack of data privacy, but we can get rid of it if we follow some rules and regulation so that our private data will remain private and personal rather than doing nothing instead of having Australian Privacy Principles. The rules and norms should be strict and should be followed by the Government, businesses, and an individual also.
For an individual, he or she should think of what are their useful and extra information. They should have to avoid posting additional information or their helpful information on social media. They should have to think wisely before adding anyone to their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or on other media and should have a sense of differentiating fake and real one. People should not trust in privacy and protection that is offered by social networks. An individual should set a complicated passwords on their user id and should change it time to time so that no one could get access to their personal and private account and their data should remain to save all the time. Secondly, an individual should not respond to messages that are of any TV programs or their favorite shows from where they can detect individual and can get their personal information which could become a severe matter later on.
The government should be responsible for maintaining data privacy of their citizens and themselves as well. Sometimes hackers may hack and may change their credentials so government should change or update their passwords from time to time. The government should educate or spread awareness about preventive measures that we should take to protect ourselves from lacking data privacy. The government should become vigilant when browsing websites or checking emails. The government should impose strict punishments for cybercrime and should maintain extra privacy on public data so that it may remain confidential and can be protected from going in wrong hands. There should be extra privacy on bank accounts, and personal details should not release by anyone in any case. The government should not share a lot of data with many individuals or coworkers, which lead to leaking of information quickly. Peoples a lot of data should not be saved by the government; only some necessary information should be there with full privacy. They should limit outside program to access to a specific type of features because it might get interact with other software of the world.
The government should ensure that websites are safe before adding their credential to it. Government and an individual as well should report and flag emails that seem to be suspicious. The government should not take any risk and set their passwords of maximum letters, which are not very common so that no one could get access to their data and websites.
People should be aware of not replying to those engaging messages that they are receiving from different companies. An individual should avoid entering or giving their essential information to any company which makes fake promises to provide them with jobs. Sometimes it may occur that while doing online shopping it may ask you for your name address number or sometimes your emails, but you should be vigilant in not doing so. It may not seem to be like that, but in actual they are asking this information only to get access for checking your interest in their product only for enhancement of their business. Individuals should not click on to links or adds which are unfamiliar to them. People should keep antivirus application always updated in their devices so that it helps us if any virus enter and essential data should be saved.
These are some rules and responsibilities that should be strictly followed by government, businesses, and an individual to maintain their data privacy. These are some significant responsibilities that if everyone follows so, they will be safe from hacking, cybercrimes, and spread of their data.
REFERENCES
Australian Government (2012) “The Role of Government in Australia” Retrieved from
https://www.australiancollaboration.com.au/pdf/FactSheets/Role-government-FactSheet.pdf
Commonwealth of Australia (2018) “Three Levels of Law-Making” Retrieved from
https://www.peo.gov.au/learning/fact-sheets/three-levels-of-law-making.html
(2019) “The Roles and Responsibilities of Federal, State and Local Governments” Retrieved from
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/about/Pages/The-Roles-and-Responsibilities-of-Federal-State-a.aspx
Productivity Commission (2017) “New Australian Government Data Sharing and Release Legislation” Retrieved from
https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/australian-government-data-sharing-release-legislation_issues-paper.pdf
Dr. Scott Brenton (2019) “Representative roles and responsibilities” Retrieved from
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/APF/monographs/What_lies_beneath/RepresentativeRoles