Recognising Privacy Awareness Week, 2-8 May 2022.

This week is Privacy Awareness Week, an annual event aimed at raising awareness of the importance of protecting personal information we collect.

This year’s theme is Privacy: The foundation of trust, and aims to highlight the importance of protecting personal information to maintain positive working relationships.  You are more likely to be trusted with information when you have demonstrated good privacy practice.

Surveys show we are becoming less trusting of organisations ability to protect their data due to breaches and misuse:

  • 84% of people believe personal information should not be used in a way that causes harm, loss or distress
  • 70% see the protection of our personal information as a major concern
  • 87% want more control and choice over the use of personal data

Australian attitudes to privacy survey 2020

How IRS Protects Our Information

Here are some of the things we do to protect our information:

  • Know and adhere to our obligations including the privacy act (Federal and State) and follow the Australian Privacy Principles
  • Foster a culture of privacy
  • Ensure our data is secure by enforcing password policies
  • Regularly raising awareness of the importance of protecting information we hold

How You Can Protect Your Personal Information

One of the easiest and best ways to protect your data is making sure you use strong passwords. Here’s some Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to setting passwords:

Do

  • Use between 12 and 20 characters — longer passwords are stronger
  • Instead of using a short, complex password that is hard to remember, consider using a longer passphrase
  • Use a combination of words that aren’t predictable but that you can remember.
  • Use two-factor authentication on accounts containing personal information

Don’t

  • Use pet names, birthdates, family or friends’ names, favourite foods, colours or singers in your new passwords.
  • Use a predictable combination of words e.g. ‘ilovehiking’, a context specific word e.g. ‘google’ or repeated sequential characters e.g. ‘aaaaaa’ or ‘123456’.
  • Avoid using famous quotations that might be easy to guess.
  • Share passwords with others, even with friends.
  • Store them on your device, unless it’s via a password manager which stores them in an encrypted database.

How Secure is Your Password?

Want to know how easy it is to hack your password? Try this tool: How secure is my password?

If you haven’t changed your passwords in a while, now might be a good time!

NEW: Request to Remove Personal Information from Google Search

Google has just launched the ability for people to request the removal of certain personal information from search results like email addresses, phone numbers, medical records etc.

Find out more about removing personal information from Google search and submitting a request.

Happy Privacy Awareness Week and stay safe online. #PAW2022