Data Protection Act (1998)

Data Protection Act (1998):

The Data Protection Act covers all personal information like addresses, phone numbers email addresses and other information people could abuse.

You cannot use data you collect for any means other than those stated when it was collected.
If you store other people's data it must be well protected.
Data must not be kept for longer than is necessary and must be kept up to date.
Data must not be sold or given to other people or organisations unless the data provider agrees.
If a person or organisation has false data about you, you have the right to change it.
Organisations that store data must be registered with the Information Commissioner's Office.

25/02/2016 Tasks

Pros and cons of original source data:

Pros:
You get the exact data needed.
Only gather as much as you need.
You know where the data came from;
so can judge how reliable it is.

Cons:
Takes a long time, depending on how much is collected.
Expensive unless hiring a third party.



Pros and cons of indirect data:

Pros:
It takes less time to gather indirect data than original source.
Cheaper to obtain.

Cons:
It could be false data.
No way of telling where it came from.
Could be more expensive than collecting it yourself.
May not be able to collect the exact data you want.



If you were developing a social media site, which type of data would you use and why?

Static: Some information like date of birth doesn't need to be changed, so it wouldn't make sense making it dynamic.
Dynamic: Most information would need to be to changed at some point, like age, name, gender, relationship status.

If you were developing a database archiving important government information, which would you use and why?

Static: Most information wouldn't change very often if it's important government information, so archiving the information would be better if it's static.
Dynamic:

Database task 1

Number 254    information: house number     knowledge: if between 200 and 300 deliver to address, data type integer, format text.

String 01874    information: telephone number    knowledge: add remaining digits on to make a mobile phone number.    data type string    format text

Colour Green    information: colour of text  Knowledge: if the colour of the text is green, it is above average    data type text    format text

Date 16/08/1974    information: date of birth    knowledge: if the date of birth is between 1951 and 1998.   data type date    format text

Number 89    information: age of a person    knowledge: if between 18 and 65 pay taxes    data type: integer    format: text

Caesar Cipher

A Caesar cipher is a cipher that encodes a message by shifting the alphabet by a certain amount of letters.
For example, if the cipher had a shift of 1 the alphabet would look like:
A B C D E F G H I
Z A B C D E F G H

So if the message was: "Cipher, not salad", and the cipher used a shift of 5:
The encoded message would be: "Hnumjw, sty xfqfi"

Caesar ciphers are easy to solve by hand and are extremely simple.