As information and communications technology (ICT) systems proliferate, it has become essential for the privacy of users to be considered and safeguarded. While there are many existing ways to protect users' digital privacy, such as network security measures, cryptography and access control strategies, these methods are not implemented equally in all countries worldwide.

Researchers at University of Canberra in Australia have recently carried out a study investigating the factors that are defining this global digital privacy divide. Their findings, published in IEEE Access, highlight several social and demographic trends influencing how digital privacy measures are implemented worldwide.

"Our team has been researching digital privacy since 2016," Mohammad Abu Alsheikh, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "This recent work was inspired by the inequality we noticed in the digital privacy protection provided to users based on their geographical location."

Over the past few decades, regions and countries worldwide introduced different policies and regulations aimed at protecting the digital privacy of internet users. These include, for instance, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which protects the privacy of users in countries within the European Union (EU), and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which is only applicable to services and users in California.