Exam practice

The data (content) is the thing itself; the metadata is data about it.

• Photo: the data is the picture (the faces, the place in it); the metadata is when it was taken, the phone’s model, and the GPS coordinates of where it was taken.
• Message: the data is the words; the metadata is who sent it, to whom, at what time, and whether it was read.

Any two, such as: Where does Rina live? (the place of photos taken at night or at home). When is she usually at home, or away? Which school does she go to? Where was she last week?
To protect herself: turn off the camera’s location (Save location off, or the camera’s location permission off), turn the location off when sharing, and avoid sending photos taken at home as files to people or sites she doesn’t know.

Any four, for example:

• An app (a video app): what you watch and for how long, to recommend videos and to pick ads.
• A phone company: which tower your phone uses, to connect your calls and to bill you.
• A bank or wallet: your identity document, because the law requires it to know its customers; and your payments, to do the job.
• The government: your birth registration and citizenship, to know who its citizens are and give them services.
• A school: your marks, to report your progress and give results.
• A shop or delivery app: your address and phone number, to deliver your order.

Benefits: directions and traffic warnings that fit where you are; finding your phone if it is lost; for everyone, traffic maps built from many phones.

Risks: a record of everywhere you have been, which could leak in a data breach or be sold; it shows where you live, study and sleep; it can be used to pick ads or guess private things (a hospital visit).

A good answer chooses and gives a reason, for example: “Only while using the app, because I need directions, but I don’t want a record of everywhere I go”, and turns off the location history.

Real consent is:

• informed: you are told clearly what will be collected, for what, and who gets it;
• free: you can say no without being punished or tricked;
• specific: for this use, not for anything at all;
• able to be taken back later.

Tapping “I agree” is often not real consent because the policy is too long and hard to read (so you aren’t informed), you can’t use the app without agreeing (so it isn’t free), and it often allows “any purpose” and “partners” (so it isn’t specific).

With the names removed, each row still has a date of birth, a ward and a class. Together these often fit only one student, so anyone who knows those facts about a student (a classmate, a neighbor) can find that student’s marks: re-identification.
Safer: leave out the date of birth and the ward, or replace them with groups (an age group, the municipality); keep only what the research needs; check that every combination left fits several students with different results; and get the consent of the students’ parents or guardians, as Nepal’s Privacy Act requires for under-18s.

Article 28 of the Constitution of Nepal (2015) makes privacy a fundamental right: a person’s home, property, documents, data, correspondence and character may not be intruded on, except as the law allows. The Privacy Act, 2075 (2018) sets it out. Any two of: consent must be obtained before collecting a person’s personal or family data; data collected with consent may be used only for the purpose it was collected for; a person under 18’s private matters may be shared only with a parent’s or guardian’s consent; giving out or publishing someone’s health, income, family or fingerprint details without their consent is a crime, punishable with up to three years in prison, a fine of up to Rs 30,000, or both.

• i.A bar chart with the axis starting at Rs 49,000 (or a tall, narrow line chart zoomed in): the Shrawan bar looks five times as tall as Baisakh’s, so sales seem to be shooting up. (A running total would climb steeply too.)
• ii.A bar chart of every month with the axis starting at 0, a title (“The shop’s sales each month, Rs”) and named axes: the bars look almost the same, which is the truth: sales rose by Rs 4,000, about 8%, from Baisakh to Shrawan, with a small dip in Asar.

Per 10,000 people: Town A: 40 ÷ 80,000 × 10,000 = 5 accidents per 10,000 people. Town B: 15 ÷ 20,000 × 10,000 = 7.5 accidents per 10,000 people.
Town B has fewer accidents in total, but more for its number of people, so for a person living there its roads are more dangerous. Comparing totals of places of different sizes is misleading; divide by the size first.

Any four, for example:

• Ask only what the question needs; no names, phone numbers or addresses unless truly needed.
• Tell everyone what is asked, why, and who will see the answers, and let them say no (consent; a parent’s or guardian’s for younger students).
• Group details that could single someone out (no exact birth dates; classes rather than sections if groups are small).
• Share only counts and averages, never one student’s answers.
• Keep the data safe (a strong password on the form’s account), and delete it when the project is done.