Data Privacy Week 2024

Data Privacy Week is an international effort to empower individuals and businesses to respect privacy, safeguard data, and enable trust. It runs from January 22-27, 2024, with the theme: TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR DATA.

According to Data growth worldwide 2010-2025 | Statista, the total amount of data created, captured, copied, and consumed globally in 2023 was 64.2 zettabytes. This amount is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes by next year.

A zettabyte is a unit of digital storage that is equivalent to 1 sextillion bytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. To put this into perspective, consider that one zettabyte is equal to 1,000 exabytes. One exabyte is equivalent to 1 billion gigabytes. Therefore, one zettabyte is equivalent to 1 trillion gigabytes.

To help you visualize how big one zettabyte is, consider the following examples:

• Streaming video: One hour of high-definition video streaming uses about 3 gigabytes of data. Therefore, 1 zettabyte is equivalent to 333.3 billion hours of high-definition video streaming.
• Social media: One minute of video uploaded to YouTube uses about 60 megabytes of data. Therefore, 1 zettabyte is equivalent to 16.6 trillion minutes of video uploaded to YouTube.
• Email: One email with a 1-megabyte attachment uses about 0.000001 gigabytes of data. Therefore, 1 zettabyte is equivalent to 1 quintillion emails with 1-megabyte attachments.

According to The Companies That Collect the Most Data [2022] - Clario, some of the biggest data collectors include Snapchat, Apple, Instagram, DoorDash, and Depop.

Data Privacy Week is a great opportunity to learn more about your data and how to protect it. If you want to view or change your privacy/security settings, but don’t know where to find them, go to Manage Your Privacy Settings - National Cybersecurity Alliance (staysafeonline.org). Use the direct links on this webpage to update your privacy settings on popular devices and online services such as Amazon, Facebook, Hulu, and TripAdvisor. You can also use this site to read about your platforms’ privacy policies and statements.

If your business is concerned about data privacy, contact AM Data Service at [email protected] to perform a cybersecurity audit.