CHAP TeR 1 Data from Day One Our personal data is everywhere Most people are probably not aware of all the places their personal data can be found or who could be looking at it Who would be interested in your personal data Why You probably know the words personal and data But have you heard them used together Personal means private individual and related to a specific person You may think of your private thoughts relationships religious beliefs or a diary when describing personal Data means facts numbers and statistics Pie charts in math class a computer’s stored information and survey or school election results may come to mind when you think of data Lately the term personal data has been making headlines and giving people a reason to pause and think about their own 4 21st century skills library
Examples of personal data include a library card number a street address a school ID or the email address and password used to log in to a Netflix account Even your name is a piece of your personal data although you may think of it as just your name By the time you head to school in the morning you may have already texted your friend checked your assignments on Google Classroom seen an Instagram photo of your school’s swim team at last night’s meet and checked the balance on your school lunch account Through the course of your morning you’ve already tapped into your personal data many times You’ve used your Try This Ask three adults if they can come up with a list of at least 20 different types of personal data Are their lists the same Did you discover a type of personal data you hadn’t thought of Sensitive data is data that is personal and important that we want to keep private Sort the data types according to how sen sitive it is For example your email address and phone number probably aren’t very sensitive because lots of people already know them However credit card numbers and your social se curity number are very sensitive because other people could use that information to commit identity theft or steal money 5 55 Data Geek
