Today is Data Privacy Day.

29 countries including United States and Canada celebrate Data Privacy Day together. 2008 was the inaugural year

This program was designed to raise awareness about data privacy practices and rights.

While it may seem like this is targeted to major corporations, government, and the academic world, one of the initiatives of Data Privacy Day is to promote privacy awareness and education among teenagers across the United States.

The IAPP International Association of Privacy Professionals is encouraging privacy professionals to give presentations about privacy—in their own organizations or at local high schools, colleges and universities—on or during the week of January 28.

Even Intel has joined the bandwagon with on-line resources and educational materials to to help educate teenagers about how to protect the privacy of their personal information online.

I think this initiative is great, with all the hype in social media like Facebook and MySapce. Or even file sharing sites like Google’s Picassa or Microsoft Mesh… who really owns that data anyways?