Data protection era quiz
1. Your go-to party song comes on. What is it?
A. “How Will I Know” by Whitney Houston
B. “…Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears
C. "Mr Brightside” by The Killers
D. "Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter
2. It’s time to binge your favourite TV show – what are you watching?
A. The A-Team or The Golden Girls
B. Friends or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
C. The Office or Gossip Girl
D. Stranger Things or Euphoria
3. Your fashion style could be summed up as:
A. Neon spandex, leg warmers, and shoulder pads
B. Baggy jeans, flannel shirts, and butterfly clips
C. Low-rise jeans, trucker hats, and layered tank tops
D. Oversized hoodies, tiny sunglasses, and TikTok-core
4. Which film would you rewatch any day?
A. The Breakfast Club
B. The Matrix
C. Mean Girls
D. Wicked
5. What’s your ultimate gadget or tech throwback?
A. A Walkman with a mixtape
B. A Game Boy or Tamagotchi
C. An iPod Classic or flip phone
D. AirPods and a ring light
6. Your ideal crush is:
A. Marty McFly or Madonna
B. Will Smith or Sarah Michelle Gellar
C. Channing Tatum or Avril Lavigne
D. Timothée Chalamet or Zendaya
7. What’s your idea of a perfect Friday night?
A. Roller skating to synth-pop with big hair and even bigger vibes
B. Hitting the arcade, then renting a VHS from Blockbuster
C. Chatting on MSN, then burning a mix CD for your crush
D. Scrolling through TikTok while rewatching your favourite Netflix show
8. What would be your social media of choice?
A. Pen pals and face-to-face hangouts
B. Early internet chatrooms and sending a TXT LOL x
C. MSN, Tumblr or early Facebook with glittery GIFs
D. Instagram, TikTok, or BeReal
Results:
It's the moment you've been waiting for - what is your data protection era? Find out below and show off your results on social media using #MyDataEra and with the images below (sized for LinkedIn)
Mostly A:
You’re a Floppy Disc Forerunner. Maybe you love retro, maybe you were there first time around. Either way, you understand that the image on the ‘save’ icon was something you could pick up and put in your briefcase.
Your era was when data protection meant enforcement against companies selling lawn aerator shoes, and ‘big data’ meant a proposed compulsory national membership scheme for football fans.
From big shoulder pads to rattan furniture, the 80s is back in 2025 – you're cool again! Let’s just hope you’ve updated how you’re keeping data safe.
Mostly B:
You’re a Millennium Bug. From Friends to Spice Girls, 90s nostalgia is always cool. If you Wannabe thinking about personal data, it’s also when the Tesco Clubcard was launched and when the Internet first started to Spice Up Your Life.
The latter part of the decade was dominated by fears that the year 2000 would see planes dropping from the skies and bank systems collapsing. Turns out you worried Too Much.
Mostly C:
You’re a CD Superstar. Flip phones and handheld game consoles are your thing. You still remember your Snake high score, even if you wouldn’t leave the room without your smartphone today.
I bet you’ve still got a stack of mix CDs your friends burned for you back in the day, even if you’re not entirely sure you still have a CD player. But maybe CDs weren’t the way forward: fast forward to 2007 and the loss of just two discs meant a data loss affecting 25 million people.
That was in part due to how quickly a gigabyte began to take up less and less space. First CDs, then flash drives, it became easier and easier to put enormous amounts of data in your pocket. You’ve put a password on that portable drive, right?
Mostly D:
You’re a Cloud Connoisseur. Never mind retro, what’s new? You want the latest tech, the latest gadgets: make it voice controlled and make sure it has multi-factor authentication.
Yours is the era when data protection went mainstream. ICO enforcement jackets were in the news around the world as we raided Cambridge Analytica, the first time many people saw how vast amounts of information could be used in ways they didn’t realise. And then there was the COVID-19 pandemic, which changed the way we thought about privacy all over again, including seeing pioneering sharing of sensitive health information to produce a vaccine at rapid speed.
You’re at the cutting edge – just make sure your updates are automatic and you don’t forget to save a backup.