
Rowenna Fielding is a self-confessed privacy nerd and Information Governance (IG) geek who began her IG career by coming out of the server room and taking an interest in information security, before broadening her horizons to include the other data protection principles as well.
In part one of this series, we caught up with Rowenna to chat about her journey into the privacy space, the data dilemma and the physical self. In part two we’ll chat about Jargonerics (another term for pointless privacy policies!), the state of data privacy and the future of the space…
Andy: I came across a post where you mentioned a word I hadn’t come across before called ‘jargonerics’. Could you explain a bit more about the concept of jargonerics…
Rowenna: ‘Jargonerics’ is a word I made up to refer to the legalistic waffle in which most privacy policies and information are delivered, consisting of impressive-sounding phrases which convey no useful information to the data subject at all but keep auditors happy. The word is a combination of ‘jargon’ — ie, difficult-to-interpret technical language — and ‘generic’ — the vague and uninformative content which leaves individuals none the wiser about what is happening to their data. There’s a lot of jargonerics out there still.