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Chapter 5: Private vs. Personal Information

Summary

Learn the most important safety distinction online: which information is private (and must be protected) and which is personal (and is safe to share).

This chapter is part of the Grade 5 Digital Citizenship learning progression. After completing it, students will be able to use the vocabulary, recognize the situations, and apply the habits introduced in the concepts listed below.

Concepts Covered

This chapter covers the following 15 concepts from the learning graph, listed in dependency order:

  1. HTTPS
  2. Personal Information
  3. Favorite Color
  4. Hobby Information
  5. Padlock Icon
  6. Private Information
  7. Birthday
  8. Full Name
  9. Home Address
  10. Location Sharing
  11. Phone Number
  12. School Name
  13. Sign Up Form
  14. GPS
  15. Identifying Information

Prerequisites

This chapter builds on concepts from:

Read the Story

Meet Noah — a student who almost handed his private information to a fun online quiz before he stopped to ask, Wait, why does this quiz need to know my address? His story shows how easy it is to mix up personal and private — and how to catch yourself in time.

Read The Story Now

Priya and the Free Art Website

Priya loves to draw. She spends hours making pictures of dragons, foxes, and tiny imaginary towns with crooked rooftops. One afternoon, her older brother shows her a free art website where kids can post their drawings and get nice comments from other kid artists around the world. Priya's eyes light up. She wants in.

She clicks the Sign Up button. A long form appears on the screen. It asks for her favorite color (purple), her favorite thing to draw (foxes), her full name, her birthday, her home address, her phone number, and the name of her school.

Priya stops. Her finger hovers over the keyboard. Should I really type all this in? she thinks. Some of those questions feel friendly and fun. Others feel... too close.

If you have ever felt that tiny "wait a minute" feeling when a website asks for too much, this chapter is for you. By the end, you will know exactly which questions are safe to answer and which ones to skip — for the rest of your life.

Hi Friends!

Maka the River Otter waving welcome Hi friends, it's Maka! This chapter is one of the most important in the whole book. I'm so proud of you for showing up. We're going to learn the difference between personal and private information — and that one idea will keep you safer online for the rest of your life. Pause, think, act!

Two Kinds of Information About You

There are two big groups of information about you. They sound almost the same, but they are very different. Telling them apart is the most important safety idea in this whole book.

Personal information is information about you that is friendly to share — it tells people who you are as a person, but it does not tell strangers how to find you in real life. Your favorite ice cream flavor is personal information. The fact that you have a pet hamster named Biscuit is personal information.

Private information is information about you that strangers must not have, because it could let them find you, contact you, or pretend to be you. Your home address is private information. Your phone number is private information. The full name on your school papers is private information.

The trick is in that little phrase: find you, contact you, or pretend to be you. If a piece of information could do any of those three things in the wrong hands, it is private. If it could not, it is personal.

Personal Information You Can Usually Share

Some personal information is so harmless and so fun that it makes the internet a friendlier place to be.

Favorite color is exactly what it sounds like — the color you love best. Telling another kid online that your favorite color is purple does not put you in any danger. The same is true for your favorite food, your favorite kind of music, and your favorite season.

Hobby information is what you like to do for fun. Drawing foxes is hobby information. Building with blocks is hobby information. Playing on a soccer team is hobby information. Hobby information helps you find other kids who like the same things you like, which is one of the best parts of the internet.

You can also share things like your age group (for example, "I'm in elementary school") and your country, as long as you are not telling a specific stranger.

Private Information You Should Never Share

The other side of the table is very different. Each one of these can be used by a stranger to find you or fool you. Treat them like the keys to your house — they don't go to people you don't know.

Full name is your first, middle, and last name all together, the name on your birth certificate. Your first name alone is usually fine in friendly chats. Your full name is private, because a stranger can use it to look up where you live.

Birthday is the exact day, month, and year you were born. Birthdays sound friendly, but they are private. Many websites and grown-up systems use a birthday to prove who you are, so a stranger with your birthday can pretend to be you. Saying "my birthday is in October" is fine. Typing the exact date and year into a stranger's website is not.

Home address is the street, number, city, and state where you live. This is the most private piece of information you have. Never type your home address into any website without first checking with a trusted adult. Even if the website looks safe, you cannot see who is reading on the other end.

Phone number is the set of digits people dial or text to reach your family's phone. Like your address, it lets strangers contact you directly. Keep it private.

School name is the name of the building you go to every day. This sounds harmless, but think about it: a stranger who knows the name of your school knows where you will be at 8:00 a.m. on a Monday. School name is private.

All of these private items have a name when grouped together.

Identifying information is any piece of information that, by itself or combined with other pieces, could tell a stranger exactly which real person you are and where to find you. Your full name + your birthday + your school name is identifying information, even though you might be tempted to give one of those by itself. The pieces add up.

Personal (usually okay to share) Private (must protect)
Favorite color Full name
Favorite food Birthday (exact date)
Hobbies and interests Home address
Age group ("I'm in elementary school") Phone number
Country School name
Pet's name Photo of yourself outside school

Sign-Up Forms — Where the Choice Happens

Most of the time, you meet these questions in one place: a sign-up form.

Sign up form is the page on a website or app where you type in information to make a new account. Some sign-up forms are short and ask for almost nothing. Others are long and ask for everything. The trick is to know that you don't have to fill in every box just because the box is there.

Here is the rule. Before you put anything into a sign-up form, ask a trusted adult to look at it with you. They will help you figure out which boxes to fill in, which to skip, and whether to use the website at all. Most kid-friendly websites are fine with empty boxes for the private stuff. If a website demands your home address or phone number to sign up, that is a sign to walk away and pick a different website.

You will not be in trouble for asking a trusted adult to check a sign-up form. That is exactly what they are there for.

Watch Out!

Maka the River Otter warning Just because a website asks for something doesn't mean it needs it. Many sign-up boxes are optional even when they look required. Always check with a trusted adult before you type private information into any form. Pause, think, act!

Where You Are — Location and GPS

There is one more kind of private information that often hides inside apps and devices, and you might not even know it is there. It is the information about where you are right now.

GPS stands for Global Positioning System. GPS is a way for a device to figure out exactly where it is on the planet, using signals from satellites in space. The GPS in a smartphone can tell which street you are on, sometimes within a few feet. That is amazing — and it is also private.

Location sharing is when a device or app tells someone else where you are. Some location sharing is helpful: a parent's phone might share its location with a child's phone so they can find each other at a busy fair. Other location sharing is not helpful at all, like an app that quietly tells strangers what city you are in.

The rule for location sharing is the same as the rule for sign-up forms. Never turn on location sharing in an app without first checking with a trusted adult. If an app you don't recognize asks for your location, the safest answer is no.

Spotting a Safer Website — HTTPS and the Padlock

Even when you decide a website is okay to use, there is one more thing you can check. Look at the address bar at the very top of your web browser, the strip you learned about in Chapter 1. The URL up there can tell you something important about whether the website is using a basic safety wrapper.

HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. You don't have to remember the long words. Just remember that a URL that starts with https:// is using a safety wrapper. The wrapper scrambles the information between your device and the website, so people in the middle cannot read it. A URL that starts with http:// (no S) does not have the wrapper.

Most web browsers also show a small picture next to the URL that means the same thing.

Padlock icon is a tiny picture of a padlock that appears in the address bar of most web browsers when a website is using HTTPS. A closed padlock means the safety wrapper is on. No padlock — or an open padlock with a warning — means it is not.

A closed padlock does not mean a website is friendly, kind, or honest. A scammer could still build a website with a padlock on it. The padlock only tells you one thing: the connection between your device and that website is wrapped, so people in the middle cannot peek.

Still, the padlock is a great first check. If a website asks you to type any information at all and there is no padlock, stop. Tell a trusted adult what you saw. Do not type anything in.

MicroSim: The Sign-Up Form Sorter

Sign-Up Form Sorter — interactive p5.js MicroSim

Type: microsim sim-id: signup-form-sorter
Library: p5.js
Status: Specified

Learning objective (Bloom: Apply): Given a list of fields from a pretend website sign-up form, the student can sort each field into "Personal — okay to share" or "Private — keep it safe."

Visual elements:

  • A responsive canvas (default 720 × 480, resizes with container width via updateCanvasSize() called first in setup()).
  • A pretend sign-up form on the left side of the canvas, drawn as a clean kid-friendly card with rows for fields like Favorite color, Full name, Hobby, Home address, Birthday, Country, Phone number, and School name.
  • Two large drop-target zones on the right side, labeled Personal — okay to share (warm green) and Private — keep it safe (warm river-blue).
  • A score area at the top right showing correct sorts out of total tries.
  • A small padlock area at the bottom that shows a closed padlock icon next to a fake https:// URL, with a one-line explanation of what the padlock means.

Controls (built-in p5.js controls per project rules, placed at the bottom of the canvas):

  • createButton('New form') to load a new pretend form with different fields shuffled in.
  • createButton('Reset') to clear the score.
  • createSelect() to switch the example URL between an https:// (with padlock) version and an http:// (no padlock) version, so students can see the difference.

Behavior:

  • Each field on the form is clickable. Clicking sends it to whichever zone the student picks.
  • A correct sort gets a soft green check and a one-sentence reason. An incorrect sort gets a friendly "try again" message and the field stays on the form.
  • All field names are platform-agnostic and never reference a real website.

Implementation notes:

  • File location: docs/sims/signup-form-sorter/ with main.html, main.js, and index.md.
  • main.html uses a plain <main></main> tag with no id attribute, so teachers can copy main.js directly into the p5.js editor.
  • In setup(), call updateCanvasSize() first, then canvas.parent(document.querySelector('main')).
  • Embedded into the chapter via an iframe in the chapter page once the sim files are built. The actual sim files are not part of this chapter task — only the spec lives here.

Implementation: p5.js sketch deployed at docs/sims/signup-form-sorter/.

Maka's Tip

Maka the River Otter giving a tip Make this your superpower habit: every time a screen asks you for anything, take one slow breath and ask, "Is this personal or private?" If you're not sure, it's private until a trusted adult helps you decide. That breath is the safest thing in the digital world.

Priya's Smart Choice

Let's go back to Priya and her sign-up form. Priya hovers over the keyboard, then she stands up and walks to the kitchen. She asks her dad to look at the form with her. Together they go through every box.

The favorite color box? Easy — purple. Priya types it in. The hobby box? Easy — drawing foxes. The full name box? Priya and her dad pick a friendly nickname instead, Fox-Artist. The birthday box? They skip it. The home address box? They skip it. The phone number box? They skip it. The school name box? They skip it.

Priya checks the address bar. There is a tiny closed padlock next to the URL. Good. She clicks Submit. The website welcomes Fox-Artist into the kid-art community. Two days later, another kid posts a kind comment on her drawing of a fox. Priya beams.

She did not give up anything private. She still got everything fun. That is exactly what a great digital citizen does.

Quick Recap

Here are the 15 new words you just learned in this chapter.

  1. HTTPS — the safer version of a website address that starts with https://
  2. Personal information — friendly facts about you, usually safe to share
  3. Favorite color — a tiny piece of personal information
  4. Hobby information — what you like to do, usually safe to share
  5. Padlock icon — the small lock shown in the address bar for HTTPS sites
  6. Private information — facts that could let strangers find or fake you
  7. Birthday — your exact date of birth, private
  8. Full name — your first, middle, and last name together, private
  9. Home address — the street and number where you live, private
  10. Location sharing — when an app tells someone where you are
  11. Phone number — the digits to reach your family's phone, private
  12. School name — the name of your school, private
  13. Sign up form — the page where you make a new account
  14. GPS — how a device knows exactly where it is on the planet
  15. Identifying information — any mix of facts that points to the real you

High-Five, Friends!

Maka the River Otter celebrating You did it! You just learned the most important safety idea in the whole book — the difference between personal and private information. You will use this every single day for the rest of your life. I'll see you in Chapter 6, where we'll learn about strong passwords, sneaky scams, and how to spot tricks online. Until then — high-five!

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