Do We Need a Digital Data Exorcism?

Abstract

Considering the many interactions we have with technology over our lifetime, many data points, records, files, and other content are recorded in many digital forms. We inevitably construct a narrative of various life events in a digital format that often lasts well beyond the expiration date of our physical form. This construction of a digital narrative is especially true regarding education records and their use for data mining as our files can be used for analysis. In this chapter, the authors discuss the idea of a digital data exorcism as the potential ability to purge educational records if it is the desire of the individual. A data exorcism can be seen as the needed process for removing or expelling data, done so to protect those from which it was derived. Many forms of data will be discussed in this chapter; however, the focus will be on educational records related to end-of-life considerations. The main theme of this chapter is that facet that we have the right to be forgotten. The right to be deleted or, in other words, “exorcised” from the various systems in which our data resides.