Washington’s Chief Privacy Officer is trying to teach you to secure your digital data
Nov 3, 2015, 4:09 PM | Updated: Nov 4, 2015, 5:06 pm
Did you know Governor Inslee appointed a Chief Privacy Officer earlier this year? He’s making sure that the data the state keeps on residents is secure. He further wants to teach Washingtonians how to keep all of their own digital information safe.
The CPO, Alex Alben, helped launch a website this week that lays out how exactly the state is protecting the personal data it collects, like when residents do everything from apply for a fishing license to visit a state-run health clinic.
The site also provides tips, such as reminding people to change their passwords every couple of months.
Washington is home to about 7 million residents. About 6 million had personal information exposed when Premera Blue Cross was hit with a cyber-attack last year.
Luckily, nothing seems to have come of it. It’s unclear whether the attackers actually did anything with all those social security numbers, mailing addresses, and dates of birth.
These kinds of data breaches are serious problems, but Alben is also concerned about the lesser known ones.
He says a lot of what actually runs the Internet is personal data, not just on social media but with any interaction we have with advertisers.
“We need to create people who are more educated digital citizens,” he said. “Because, frankly, people shouldn’t be subject to racking or profiling unless they really have an ability to understand what the environment is like.”
Alben says he’s changed his own habits, too.
“When my kids used to need my credit card number or the last four digits of my Social Security Number, I used to send that out in a text but that’s really not appropriate,” he said. “It’s not secure.”
You want to use the phone to share that info — and, that is, by actually talking through it — because a text could be tracked and captured by someone.
Alben says personal privacy is a new frontier of human rights. That’s why consumers need resources like the new state website in order to learn how to better protect themselves.
