Keywords
Abstract
The increase in opening up data to the public while advocated also raises concerns about data privacy. This study explores the knowledge and attitude of individuals towards open data and associated privacy issues. Students from two faculties representing individuals with legal knowledge and those with information technology knowledge are used as proxy in the study with 160 respondents. Data was collected using a questionnaire with sections on attitude to open data, knowledge of data privacy and privacy implementation techniques. It was found that only 52.5% of the respondents had previous knowledge of open data, and of these, 73% are yet to explore any open data site mainly due to lack of awareness. The study revealed that credit card details is the dataset mostly considered personal by 28% of the respondents and of high risk to privacy if released in the open domain. However, respondents are most willing to release their pictures for research purposes and on social media while exam results were the least favored for release in a university environment. On data security measures, anonymity is the most preferred technique by 37% of the respondents together with legal policy such as notifications, opt-in and opt-out rights to mitigate the risk of privacy violations. The study concludes that respondents’awareness and knowledge of open data and personal identifiable information (PII) is still low and recommends continuous education of data subjects to privacy compliance of open datawith respect to PIIin the collection, processing, storage and opening of data.
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