University Essay: Digital Data Privacy Analysis for NIT2201

This essay, submitted for the NIT2201 course, delves into the critical topic of digital data privacy. It begins by defining digital privacy and highlighting its significance, especially in the context of e-commerce. The essay explores the various threats to data security, including password compromises and data breaches, emphasizing the importance of proactive measures. It provides insights into securing passwords, understanding privacy settings, and the role of legislation in protecting user data. The essay discusses Australian privacy laws in comparison to those in the EU and the US, and presents a mind map summarizing key points. The student's perspective on user responsibility, legal frameworks, and the need for enhanced data protection are also included. Finally, the essay concludes by summarizing the discussed issues and reiterating the importance of digital privacy in today's world. References to relevant literature are provided.

Running head: DIGITAL DATA PRIVACY
DIGITAL DATA PRIVACY
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Introduction
Digital privacy can be considered as the security as well as privacy level of personal
information that is published through the internet in the digital platforms. Digital privacy is
usually a broad term which refers to numerous factors, technologies and techniques that are used
for the purpose of protecting sensitive as well as private data, preferences and communication
(Zhang, 2018). Digital privacy as well as anonymity is usually paramount of users, especially
when e-commerce continues to get traction. Violation of privacy as well as risk to threats is
various standard considerations for any sort of website that is under the process of development
(De Hert, Papakonstantinou & Malgieri, 2018). Digital privacy is a particular cause for concern
for a particular user who is planning to carry out an online purchase, in this process the
password of a user might get compromised, in order to prevent these issues, digital privacy is
vital.
Discussion
Privacy can be considered as a mechanism that is used by users for the purpose of
securing their data; these data can be of any type, size and might belong to any field. Privacy of
data is of utmost important for a particular user. The data that are usually protected by people
include organizational details, personal details, payment details or details regarding transactions
with people and many more (Nieto, Rios & Lopez, 2018). Digital privacy can be defined as the
right to privacy of users of the digital media. The digital privacy can also be referred to
protection of a particular individual’s information which is used or created at the time of using
the internet, a personal device of a computer. The concept of digital privacy had been very

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critical in Australia (Armando, Bezzi & Metoui, 2019). According to various revelations started
to unfold regarding the misuse of personal data by the Cambridge Analytica, numerous
Australians has only learnt the fact that various Australian politicians had provided themselves a
free service to bypass the privacy laws (Esposito, De Santis & Tortora, 2018). Australian laws
for data privacy have been weak as compared to the ones in the United States, the European
Union and the United Kingdom.
Issues of the concern that are usually raised in the field of digital materials include the
risk of keeping their data. Every file that is digital in nature is usually formed of a serous of ones
and zeros, they also known as bits (Wadmann & Hoeyer, 2018). These streams are to be
captured as well as retained after a certain period of time. The capturing as well as retaining
process ensures the fact that these data are stored without any loss along with ensuring the
survival of the digital materials. These materials face numerous threats due to their presence in
the digital environment (Mayer‐Schönberger & Ingelsson, 2018). In some cases, the removable
data might be lest on a particular shelf and sometimes might also be forgotten, the files that are
stored might also be left without any owner or a particular third party provider of the cloud
storage.
Digital privacy of the data that belongs to a user must be considered to be of utmost
importance because every user has numerous things that are completely confidential and are not
supposed to be shared with anyone (Marelli & Testa, 2018). Some more data that could be
provided as proofs on the importance of digital privacy include the results that have been
retrieved from the studies that have been carried out by various researched, they include, around
41% of experienced fraudulent credit and debit card charges occur, around 35% of people had
resulted in compromising their data (Hallman, Li & Chang, 2018). Besides this around 16% of

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people had faced hacking of their email accounts, around 13% of people had provided the
responsibility to someone else for taking control of their social media accounts, 15% of social
security numbers were revealed due to their irresponsibility without even people knowing
(Bates, 2018). The results are endless because there are various unscrupulous people are present
in the internet that looks for a change to take advantage of users’ mistakes.
There are various ways by which users can ensure regarding the security in the digital
platforms like Facebook, Google, iCloud and many more, these ways are as follows
 Securing passwords: users must be very careful while creating passwords in any digital
platform, either on Faceboo or Paypal, and this is because both these platforms might
have different sets of data but they could be used by hackers for their ill purposes
(Muhammad, Dey & Weerakkody, 2018). Strong passwords must be set, various
predictable passwords must not be kept such as names, address, date of birth, name of
family members, names of spouse and many more. Two factor authentications can also
be used by the users along with not saving any kind of password in the devices of the
users.
 Staying conscious to the privacy settings: most of the applications usually provide for the
users, this provides freedom to the users o know regarding how much as well as what
sort of data is shared by the users (DeMarco & Fox, 2019). Users must always the least
amount of data for the purpose of sharing. They must be cautious while sharing their
name as well as location.
Not everyone needs the same level of privacy, this is because some people might have
very important documents or data that are very confidential in nature, they require high level of
privacy, whereas people who do not have enough data in their digital platforms, they require low

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or medium level of privacy (Zhang, 2018). People having confidential data related to their
organization or regarding their payment details, they require more privacy as compared to
others.
Mind map
Image 1: mind map
(Source: created by author)
According to me legislation must pass various new laws for protecting privacy, this is
because with the introduction and implementation of newer technologies, various cyber

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criminals and hackers have figured out new ways to steal data (Nieto, Rios & Lopez, 2018).
There are various social media platforms which get access to users’ data without their consent or
without them knowing, in order to prevent these activities; the legislators must pass various new
laws for protecting the privacy of users (Armando, Bezzi & Metoui, 2019). These laws would
not provide the authority to any digital media platform to access data regarding any of their
accounts in these platforms.
According to my point of view, people must be held responsible for securing their data to
some extent, they must initiate various steps that help in maintaining the privacy and security of
the data, initiatives like keeping a strong password, not letting a third person to access their data
assets like mobile phones, laptops and many more, the users must also be sure that the assets
through which these data can be accessed are kept in a secured manner, this is because in case a
user loses his phone due to his irresponsibility, the user would be responsible for the loss of his
data along with any loss of data in these digital platforms (Esposito, De Santis & Tortora, 2018).
According to my experience people do not realize at that regarding the ways, by which their data
is getting accessed, collected and misused. This is because had they been known, they would not
have kept easy passwords and be casual regarding their devices, they would not have shared
passwords with people.
The EU rules had been developed for the purpose of ensuring the fact that personal data
enjoys a high standard of protection everywhere in the EU. The two vital pillars of this data
protection framework includes ePrivacy Directive that is also known as Directive on Privacy
and Electronic communications and General Data Protection Regulation, these had been adopted
in the year of 2016. They ensure that personal data could be gathered only under various
conditions that are strict in nature along with being a legitimate purpose (Wadmann & Hoeyer,

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2018). The federal privacy act that was established in the year 1988 provides a particular
framework for the purpose of protecting personal data in the digital context in Australia. This
particular law intends to become neutral to the technologies and instead of providing various
prescriptive rules (Marelli & Testa, 2018). This legislation aimed in providing a specific degree
of self-regulation on the part of the industrial agencies along with the public.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be stated that in today’s digital world, privacy of
individuals has been the trending issue for various consumers. The confidence of consumers in
the field of digital privacy has been directly affecting as well as limiting the growth of internet
commercial development. For these purpose, the privacy concerns of individuals in the field of
digital platforms must be considered. This particular assignment described regarding the idea of
issues that are raised around various digital materials, what are the options to considering
ensuring digital privacy. It future discusses regarding the measures that could be undertaken by
various users for the purpose of ensuring their data privacy in the digital platforms. It also
compares the privacy law in Australia with the ones present in the European Union.

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References
Armando, A., Bezzi, M., Metoui, N., & Sabetta, A. (2019). Risk-based privacy-aware
information disclosure. In Censorship, Surveillance, and Privacy: Concepts,
Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 567-586). IGI Global.
Bates, J. (2018). The politics of data friction. Journal of Documentation, 74(2), 412-429.
De Hert, P., Papakonstantinou, V., Malgieri, G., Beslay, L., & Sanchez, I. (2018). The right to
data portability in the GDPR: Towards user-centric interoperability of digital
services. Computer Law & Security Review, 34(2), 193-203.
DeMarco, J. V., & Fox, B. A. (2019). Data Rights and Data Wrongs: Civil Litigation and the
New Privacy Norms.
Esposito, C., De Santis, A., Tortora, G., Chang, H., & Choo, K. K. R. (2018). Blockchain: A
panacea for healthcare cloud-based data security and privacy?. IEEE Cloud
Computing, 5(1), 31-37.
Hallman, R. A., Li, S., & Chang, V. (2018, October). 2nd International Workshop on
Multimedia Privacy and Security. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference
on Computer and Communications Security (pp. 2173-2174). ACM.
Marelli, L., & Testa, G. (2018). Scrutinizing the EU general data protection
regulation. Science, 360(6388), 496-498.
Mayer‐Schönberger, V., & Ingelsson, E. (2018). Big Data and medicine: a big deal?. Journal of
internal medicine, 283(5), 418-429.

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Muhammad, S. S., Dey, B. L., & Weerakkody, V. (2018). Analysis of factors that influence
customers’ willingness to leave big data digital footprints on social media: A systematic
review of literature. Information Systems Frontiers, 20(3), 559-576.
Nieto, A., Rios, R., & Lopez, J. (2018). IoT-Forensics meets privacy: towards cooperative
digital investigations. Sensors, 18(2), 492.
Wadmann, S., & Hoeyer, K. (2018). Dangers of the digital fit: Rethinking seamlessness and
social sustainability in data-intensive healthcare. Big Data & Society, 5(1),
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Zhang, D. (2018, October). Big data security and privacy protection. In 8th International
Conference on Management and Computer Science (ICMCS 2018). Atlantis Press.