The Internet of You.
28th January was World Data Privacy/Protection day. A day that is well represented and known in the Global North. It so happened that on this day, I was in Amsterdam enroute to San Francisco for our Mozilla Work Week and when I got on the internet at the airport, I kept getting all those notifications from the various sites I visited telling me that i had to be sure that i knew that the site was either using cookies or that they would be collecting or monitoring information about my activities online. Thanks European Union! This is as a result of the GDPR regulations in the EU. Upon landing in San Francisco (read jet lag) I was back to normal operations where no one bothered to let me know that they were looking at my clicks and swipes.
Last week, in readiness for the day, we decided to carry out a survey in Kenya where the idea was to understand whether people generally knew about the ideas of data protection. The survey was administed to 200 respondents spread across the 47 counties of the country. Below is a summary of the findings.
- A whole lot of people are aware about Data Privacy…
2. Surprisingly, more people read the terms and conditions but…
3. …Not enough people have the power to do anything about what they just read. They find the terms too complex, time consuming or helpless since its my way or the highway.
4. The data protection bill has been in discussion for a while now and interestingly, a lot of people have read it. The bill is available here.
5. In comparison to what the government defines as personal information, more people have varied ideas of what that should be. To most, Personal Information has a lot to do with their bank accounts and family information.
6. While some people have had their information obtained and used against their consent…
7. … A lot of people have lost this data to their close friends! So careful with who you trust out there!
8. It was quite interesting that more people know that they are ultimately responsible for their data. That said, it looks like the government is also deemed responsible for some of it.
9. We sent out a targeted survey to people around the country (47 counties) and received responses from 22 counties. Not bad :-) We hit our 200 people target.
In conclusion, this was a great exercise and the findings were quite interesting. At the end of the day, your data security is your responsibility. The government has been discussing the data protection bill since 2013 and still no progress made. Private sector organizations have their own vested interests in accessing and using private data and in some cases, we have seen close family and friends use our information to defraud us.
Take away, guard your information because it is the power that can be used for or against you. All the best!
