This week (May 8-12, 2017) is Privacy Awareness Week—an annual initiative of the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities Forum (APPA) that concentrates on sharing information about privacy practices and rules.

The APPA is an interesting group made up of privacy regulators from Australia, British Columbia, Canada, Colombia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macao, Mexico, New South Wales, New Zealand, The Northern Territory, Peru, Queensland, Singapore, the United States (both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are included), and Victoria. It has been in existence since 1992 (way before privacy became such a huge issue with the Internet), and they meet twice a year to “form partnerships and exchange ideas about privacy regulation, new technologies and the management of privacy enquiries and complaints.” What a brilliant idea…

This year’s theme for Privacy Awareness Week is “Care When you Share,” and APPA is “encouraging individuals to care about their privacy and better inform themselves of what will or might happen to their personal information before they share it” as well as better educating employees of governmental agencies to understand their responsibilities with others’ personal information and to basically respect it and treat it as their own.

APPA and its members have distributed great resources for Privacy Awareness Week, including posters with the theme “Pause for Privacy,” a Quickguide for CIOs, a guide on “How to Embed and Support a Culture of Privacy,” and guides for the sharing of information between governmental agencies.

So embrace Privacy Awareness Week and “Share with Care.” Pause before you click “I agree.” Think twice before you give your Social Security number to someone or enter all of your personal information into a website form. These are all previous Privacy Tips from this blog, but it is always good to revisit them—especially when the theme of Privacy Awareness Week is “Share with Care.”

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