CMU and CLP celebrate International Data Privacy Day on January 28

In celebration of International Privacy Day, Carnegie Mellon University is teaming up with Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (CLP) to host Data Privacy Day 2024.

The event will take place on Sunday, January 28 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at CLP-Main (Oakland)in the South Wing Reading Room on the 2nd floor. Data Privacy Day is open to the public, and no registration is required. Lunch will be provided.

Carnegie Mellon hosted its first Data Privacy Day in 2014 as part of an international effort to empower and educate people to protect their privacy and control their digital footprint. For its ninth installment, CMU is collaborating with CLP to celebrate International Data Privacy Day by bringing practical advice on protecting privacy online to the general public, holding the event off the university's campus for the first time.

“We wanted to take a more community-oriented approach this year,” said Hana Habib, Associate Director of Carnegie Mellon University's Masters in Privacy Engineering program. “This event is centered on our Privacy Clinic, which involves CMU students and researchers who are experts in the privacy domain identifying topics of interest to the general public, and advising them on how they can take a more privacy-protective approach to how they use the internet.”

"In the U.S., privacy protection largely falls on the hands of consumers, so it’s really up to end users to take the steps to protect their privacy"

This year’s Privacy Clinic will give attendees an opportunity to learn strategies for protecting their privacy during their daily usage of digital technology. CMU’s information privacy and security students and researchers will provide information and answer questions about privacy risks and remedies concerning topics ranging from creating strong passwords and private browsing, to posting sensitive information and understanding iPhone app privacy reports.

For Habib, Data Privacy Day provides a great occasion for privacy practitioners to teach  the community about tools that are often easy to overlook, but are crucial to empowering individuals to protect their data in a digital world.

“In the U.S., privacy protection largely falls on the hands of consumers, so it’s really up to end users to take the steps to protect their privacy,” said Habib. “A lot of people don’t have the time to do that, or the knowledge and skill set to use all of the different tools or settings that they could be, so this is an opportunity for us who work in privacy to help people learn about the ways that they can take action to protect their privacy.”

Check out the Data Privacy Day website for more information and a full schedule of the day’s activities.