  Digital privacy has become an essential component of information and
communications technology (ICT) systems. There are many existing methods for
digital privacy protection, including network security, cryptography, and
access control. However, there is still a gap in the digital privacy protection
levels available for users. This paper studies the digital privacy divide (DPD)
problem in ICT systems. First, we introduce an online DPD study for
understanding the DPD problem by collecting responses from 776 ICT users using
crowdsourcing task assignments. Second, we propose a factor analysis-based
statistical method for generating the DPD index from a set of observable DPD
question variables. In particular, the DPD index provides one scaled measure
for the DPD gap by exploring the dimensionality of the eight questions in the
DPD survey. Third, we introduce a DPD proportional odds model for analyzing the
relationship between the DPD status and the socio-demographic patterns of the
users. Our results show that the DPD survey meets the internal consistency
reliability with rigorous statistical measures, e.g., Cronbach's $\alpha=0.92$.
Furthermore, the DPD index is shown to capture the underlying communality of
all DPD variables. Finally, the DPD proportional odds model indicates a strong
statistical correlation between the DPD status and the age groups of the ICT
users. For example, we find that young users (15-32 years) are generally more
concerned about their digital privacy than senior ones (33 years and over).
