WebProNews

A year after the first Data Protection Day in Europe, Google will be part of the celebration of the now-renamed Data Privacy day, aimed at educating people about their data and how to manage it.

Today is Data Privacy Day, but apparently cake isn't involved, and forget about having a paid holiday, either. We wonder if Hallmark has a card for this?

Though we may take the idea of a day of privacy awareness talked up by Google with a shot of cynicism, the concept remains sound. People have valuable personal information to control, other people would love to steal it, and still more people wish to use it for various reasons.

What's an online consumer to do? Well, he could watch a privacy video, Google's third in a series. Or read a handy privacy booklet.

A trio of notables at the search advertising giant discussed Data Privacy Day 2008 (woo hoo!) at the official Google blog. Among the highlights: Google will participate in a data privacy conference at Duke University today.

Speakers from the US and abroad tackle the topic of consumer data privacy. Differences between European and US privacy laws should be a focal point; we see the difference as privacy being mandated in Europe, but largely left up to private industry in the US.

Google also backed the creation of educational materials on teen online privacy. One slide advises teens to "think about tomorrow when acting today."

Nice idea, but we think the typical teen may be a teensy bit averse to doing that.