AP CSP Day 22: Privacy, PII, & Ethical Computing
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Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is any data that can be used to identify a specific individual, including name, address, phone number, email, or government ID. The aggregation problem describes how combining individually harmless data points can create a privacy violation more serious than any single piece alone. AP CSP exam questions ask students to evaluate scenarios where data collection or sharing creates ethical concerns. Recognizing that digital systems can persist and aggregate data indefinitely is central to understanding modern privacy risks.
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Privacy, PII, and Ethical Computing
What Is PII?
Personally Identifiable Information is any data that can be used to identify a specific individual, either alone or combined with other information. Name, email, phone number, address, SSN, and IP address are classic examples of PII.
The Aggregation Problem
Individual data points that seem harmless can become a serious privacy violation when combined. Knowing someone's name is harmless. Knowing their employer is harmless. Knowing their daily commute route is harmless. Combined, these reveal where to find a specific person at a specific time.
Practice Question
A mobile app requests permission to access a user's contacts, location, and photos. Which of the following best describes a privacy concern with granting all these permissions?
Contacts contain names and phone numbers (PII). Location data reveals where a person lives, works, and travels. Photos may contain sensitive images. Granting broad permissions allows the app to access and potentially share this PII with third-party advertisers or data brokers.
A) Permissions primarily affect data access, not app performance. C) While location services use some battery, the primary concern is privacy, not power consumption. D) Permissions are granted per app — granting permissions to one app does not affect other apps.
Students focus on performance impacts (speed, battery) rather than the privacy implications of data access. The AP exam emphasizes understanding what data is collected and how it could be misused.
When evaluating app permissions, think about what PII could be collected, who might access it, and how it could be used beyond the app's stated purpose.
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