January 27, 2025

Happy Data Privacy Week 2025! Each year, countries around the world celebrate Data Privacy Week during the last week of January. This tradition began as Data Privacy Day on January 28, 2007, to mark the anniversary of the first legally binding international treaty dealing with privacy and data protection, and it has since grown into a full week.

This year’s theme for Data Privacy Week is “Put Privacy First”, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has shared tips and resources for how individuals and businesses can put privacy first on its website. On January 31st, the OPC along with other Canadian privacy regulators will also be discussing data privacy issues that are “top of mind” for them during an online webinar. Click here to register for free.

To do our part at DWW, we have compiled 5 key tips for putting privacy first:

  1. Individuals can put their privacy first by familiarizing themselves with their privacy rights under Canada’s federal and provincial privacy laws. To read a summary of these laws, click here.
  2. Individuals can also put their privacy first by reviewing their privacy settings on devices and apps that they use, and deactivating and deleting the data on old accounts which they no longer use.
  3. Businesses can put their consumer’s privacy first by avoiding long and complex privacy policies. Ensure the policy your business shares with consumers is concise and easily understood.
  4. Businesses can also put privacy first by implementing privacy by design. Privacy by design is a methodology for proactively building privacy into your business practices in order to anticipate and prevent privacy incidents before they occur. To read more about privacy by design, click here.
  5. Finally, everyone can put their privacy first in 2025 by minimizing the amount of personal information they share online. Before making an account on a new website, consider why that website might need the information they are requesting. Do they have a good reason? Make sure to only share your personal information with a website or app that you trust, share as little information as possible, and don’t save sensitive data (like payment information) to your account if it is not required.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of DWW’s Data Privacy Week 2025 series, which will be posted in the coming days.