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Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of appropriate use and protection of information. Privacy may also take the form of bodily integrity.
Throughout history, there have been various conceptions of privacy. Most cultures acknowledge the right of individuals to keep aspects of their personal lives out of the public domain. The right to be free from unauthorized invasions of privacy by governments, corporations, or individuals is enshrined in the privacy laws of many countries and, in some instances, their constitutions.
With the rise of technology, the debate regarding privacy has expanded from a bodily sense to include a digital sense. In most countries, the right to digital privacy is considered an extension of the original right to privacy, and many countries have passed acts that further protect digital privacy from public and private entities.
There are multiple techniques to invade privacy, which may be employed by corporations or governments for profit or political reasons. Conversely, in order to protect privacy, people may employ encryption or anonymity measures.
Privacy has historical roots in ancient Greek philosophical discussions. The most well-known of these was Aristotle's distinction between two spheres of life: the public sphere of the polis, associated with political life, and the private sphere of the oikos, associated with domestic life. Privacy is valued along with other basic necessities of life in the Jewish deutero-canonical Book of Sirach.
Islam's holy text, the Qur'an, states the following regarding privacy: ‘Do not spy on one another’ (49:12); ‘Do not enter any houses except your own homes unless you are sure of their occupants' consent’ (24:27).
English philosopher John Locke’s (1632-1704) writings on natural rights and the social contract laid the groundwork for modern conceptions of individual rights, including the right to privacy. In his Second Treatise of Civil Government(1689), Locke argued that a man is entitled to his own self through one’s natural rights of life, liberty, and property. He believed that the government was responsible for protecting these rights so individuals were guaranteed private spaces to practice personal activities.
In the political sphere, philosophers hold differing views on the right of private judgment. German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) makes the distinction between Morality, which refers to an individual’s private judgment, and sittlichkeit, pertaining to one’s rights and obligations as defined by an existing corporate order. On the contrary, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), an English philosopher, interpreted law as an invasion of privacy. His theory of utilitarianism argued that legal actions should be judged by the extent of their contribution to human wellbeing, or necessary utility.
Hegel’s notions were modified by prominent 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Mill’s essay On Liberty (1859) argued for the importance of protecting individual liberty against the tyranny of the majority and the interference of the state. His views emphasized the right of privacy as essential for personal development and self-expression.
Discussions surrounding surveillance coincided with philosophical ideas on privacy. Jeremy Bentham developed the phenomenon known as the Panoptic effect through his 1791 architectural design of a prison called Panopticon. The phenomenon explored the possibility of surveillance as a general awareness of being watched that could never be proven at any particular moment. French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) concluded that the possibility of surveillance in the instance of the Panopticon meant a prisoner had no choice but to conform to the prison's rules.
In 1948, 1984, written by George Orwell, was published. A classic dystopian novel, 1984 describes the life of Winston Smith in 1984, located in Oceania, a totalitarian state. The all-controlling Party, the party in power led by Big Brother, is able to control power through mass surveillance and limited freedom of speech and thought. George Orwell provides commentary on the negative effects of totalitarianism, particularly on privacy and censorship. Parallels have been drawn between 1984 and modern censorship and privacy, a notable example being that large social media companies, rather than the government, are able to monitor a user's data and decide what is allowed to be said online through their censorship policies, ultimately for monetary purposes.
In the 1960s, people began to consider how changes in technology were bringing changes in the concept of privacy. Vance Packard's The Naked Society was a popular book on privacy from that era and led US discourse on privacy at that time. In addition, Alan Westin's Privacy and Freedom shifted the debate regarding privacy from a physical sense, how the government controls a person's body (i.e. Roe v. Wade) and other activities such as wiretapping and photography. As important records became digitized, Westin argued that personal data was becoming too accessible and that a person should have complete jurisdiction over their data, laying the foundation for the modern discussion of privacy.
New technologies can also create new ways to gather private information. In 2001, the legal case Kyllo v. United States (533 U.S. 27) determined that the use of thermal imaging devices that can reveal previously unknown information without a warrant constitutes a violation of privacy. In 2019, after developing a corporate rivalry in competing voice-recognition software, Apple and Amazon required employees to listen to intimate moments and faithfully transcribe the contents.
In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Riley v. California (573 U.S. 373), where David Leon Riley was arrested after he was pulled over for driving on expired license tags when the police searched his phone and discovered that he was tied to a shooting, that searching a citizen's phone without a warrant was an unreasonable search, a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court concluded that the cell phones contained personal information different from trivial items, and went beyond to state that information stored on the cloud was not necessarily a form of evidence. Riley v. California evidently became a landmark case, protecting the digital protection of citizen's privacy when confronted with the police.
A recent notable occurrence of the conflict between law enforcement and a citizen in terms of digital privacy has been in the 2018 case, Carpenter v. United States (585 U.S. ____). In this case, the FBI used cell phone records without a warrant to arrest Timothy Ivory Carpenter on multiple charges, and the Supreme Court ruled that the warrantless search of cell phone records violated the Fourth Amendment, citing that the Fourth Amendment protects "reasonable expectations of privacy" and that information sent to third parties still falls under data that can be included under "reasonable expectations of privacy".
Beyond law enforcement, many interactions between the government and citizens have been revealed either lawfully or unlawfully, specifically through whistleblowers. One notable example is Edward Snowden, who released multiple operations related to the mass surveillance operations of the National Security Agency (NSA), where it was discovered that the NSA continues to breach the security of millions of people, mainly through mass surveillance programs whether it was collecting great amounts of data through third party private companies, hacking into other embassies or frameworks of international countries, and various breaches of data, which prompted a culture shock and stirred international debate related to digital privacy.
The Internet's effect on privacy includes all of the ways that computational technology and the entities that control it can subvert the privacy expectations of their users. In particular, the right to be forgotten is motivated by both the computational ability to store and search through massive amounts of data as well as the subverted expectations of users who share information online without expecting it to be stored and retained indefinitely. Phenomena such as revenge porn and deepfakes are not merely individual because they require both the ability to obtain images without someone's consent as well as the social and economic infrastructure to disseminate that content widely. Therefore, privacy advocacy groups such as the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and the Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that addressing the new privacy harms introduced by the Internet requires both technological improvements to encryption and anonymity as well as societal efforts such as legal regulations to restrict corporate and government power.
While the Internet began as a government and academic effort up through the 1980s, private corporations began to enclose the hardware and software of the Internet in the 1990s, and now most Internet infrastructure is owned and managed by for-profit corporations. As a result, the ability of governments to protect their citizens' privacy is largely restricted to industrial policy, instituting controls on corporations that handle communications or personal data. Privacy regulations are often further constrained to only protect specific demographics such as children, or specific industries such as credit card bureaus.
A review and evaluation of scholarly work regarding the current state of the value of individuals' privacy of online social networking show the following results: "first, adults seem to be more concerned about potential privacy threats than younger users; second, policy makers should be alarmed by a large part of users who underestimate risks of their information privacy on OSNs; third, in the case of using OSNs and its services, traditional one-dimensional privacy approaches fall short".Hugl, Ulrike (2011), "Reviewing Person's Value of Privacy of Online Social Networking," Internet Research, 21(4), in press, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1066-2243&volume=21&issue=4&articleid=1926600&show=abstract This is exacerbated by deanonymization research indicating that personal traits such as sexual orientation, race, religious and political views, personality, or intelligence can be inferred based on a wide variety of digital footprints, such as samples of text, browsing logs, or Facebook Likes.
Intrusions of social media privacy are known to affect employment in the United States. Microsoft reports that 75 percent of U.S. recruiters and human-resource professionals now do online research about candidates, often using information provided by search engines, social-networking sites, photo/video-sharing sites, personal web sites and blogs, and Twitter. They also report that 70 percent of U.S. recruiters have rejected candidates based on internet information. This has created a need by many candidates to control various online privacy settings in addition to controlling their online reputations, the conjunction of which has led to legal suits against both social media sites and US employers.
Despite the way breaches of privacy can magnify online harassment, online harassment is often used as a justification to curtail freedom of speech, by removing the expectation of privacy via anonymity, or by enabling law enforcement to invade privacy without a search warrant. In the wake of Amanda Todd's death, the Canadian parliament proposed a motion purporting to stop bullying, but Todd's mother herself gave testimony to parliament rejecting the bill due to its provisions for warrantless breaches of privacy, stating "I don't want to see our children victimized again by losing privacy rights."
Even where these laws have been passed despite privacy concerns, they have not demonstrated a reduction in online harassment. When the Korea Communications Commission introduced a registration system for online commenters in 2007, they reported that malicious comments only decreased by 0.9%, and in 2011 it was repealed. A subsequent analysis found that the set of users who posted the most comments actually increased the number of "aggressive expressions" when forced to use their real name.
In the US, while federal law only prohibits online harassment based on protected characteristics such as gender and race, individual states have expanded the definition of harassment to further curtail speech: Florida's definition of online harassment includes "any use of data or computer software" that "Has the effect of substantially disrupting the orderly operation of a school."
Several methods to protect user privacy in location-based services have been proposed, including the use of anonymizing servers and blurring of information. Methods to quantify privacy have also been proposed, to calculate the equilibrium between the benefit of obtaining accurate location information and the risks of breaching an individual's privacy.Athanasios S. Voulodimos and Charalampos Z. Patrikakis, "Quantifying Privacy in Terms of Entropy for Context Aware Services", special issue of the Identity in the Information Society journal, "Identity Management in Grid and SOA", Springer, vol. 2, no 2, December 2009
In the wake of these types of scandals, many large American technology companies such as Google, Apple, and Facebook have been subjected to hearings and pressure under the U.S. legislative system. In 2011, US Senator Al Franken wrote an open letter to Steve Jobs, noting the ability of iPhones and iPads to record and store users' locations in unencrypted files.Popkin, Helen A.S., "Government officials want answers to secret iPhone tracking". MSNBC, "Technolog", April 21, 2011 Apple claimed this was an unintentional software bug, but Justin Brookman of the Center for Democracy and Technology directly challenged that portrayal, stating "I'm glad that they are fixing what they call bugs, but I take exception with their strong denial that they track users." In 2021, the U.S. state of Arizona found in a court case that Google misled its users and stored the location of users regardless of their location settings.
Digital privacy has become the main source of concern for many mobile users, especially with the rise of privacy scandals such as the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Apple has received some reactions for features that prohibit advertisers from tracking a user's data without their consent. Google attempted to introduce an alternative to cookies named FLoC which it claimed reduced the privacy harms, but it later retracted the proposal due to antitrust probes and analyses that contradicted their claims of privacy.
In Australia, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015 made a distinction between collecting the contents of messages sent between users and the metadata surrounding those messages.
Many countries have broad privacy laws outside their constitutions, including Australia's Privacy Act 1988, Argentina's Law for the Protection of Personal Data of 2000, Canada's 2000 Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and Japan's 2003 Personal Information Protection Law.
Beyond national privacy laws, there are international privacy agreements. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights says "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon their honor and reputation." The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published its Privacy Guidelines in 1980. The European Union's 1995 Data Protection Directive guides privacy protection in Europe. The 2004 Privacy Framework by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation is a privacy protection agreement for the members of that organization.
One example of the free market approach is to be found in the voluntary OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data. The principles reflected in the guidelines, free of legislative interference, are analyzed in an article putting them into perspective with concepts of the GDPR put into law later in the European Union.
In a consumer protection approach, in contrast, it is claimed that individuals may not have the time or knowledge to make informed choices, or may not have reasonable alternatives available. In support of this view, Jensen and Potts showed that most Privacy policy are above the reading level of the average person.
In 2008 the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) conducted a review of Australian privacy law and produced a report titled "For Your Information". Recommendations were taken up and implemented by the Australian Government via the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill 2012. Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill 2012.
In 2015, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015 was passed, to some controversy over its human rights implications and the role of media.
/ref> Privacy is also protected under ss. 7 and 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which is typically applied in the criminal law context. In Quebec, individuals' privacy is safeguarded by articles 3 and 35 to 41 of the Civil Code of Quebec as well as by s. 5 of the Charter of human rights and freedoms.
Although there are comprehensive regulations for data protection in the European Union, one study finds that despite the laws, there is a lack of enforcement in that no institution feels responsible to control the parties involved and enforce their laws.Burghardt, Buchmann, Böhm, Kühling, Sivridis A Study on the Lack of Enforcement of Data Protection Acts Proceedings of the 3rd int. conference on e-democracy, 2009. The European Union also champions the Right to be Forgotten concept in support of its adoption by other countries.
Unlike the EU and most EU-member states, the US does not recognize the right to privacy of non-US citizens. The UN's Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, Joseph A. Cannataci, criticized this distinction.
There is extensive commentary over the meaning of being "let alone", and among other ways, it has been interpreted to mean the right of a person to choose seclusion from the attention of others if they wish to do so, and the right to be immune from scrutiny or being observed in private settings, such as one's own home. Although this early vague legal concept did not describe privacy in a way that made it easy to design broad legal protections of privacy, it strengthened the notion of privacy rights for individuals and began a legacy of discussion on those rights in the US.
Various theorists have imagined privacy as a system for limiting access to one's personal information. Edwin Lawrence Godkin wrote in the late 19th century that "nothing is better worthy of legal protection than private life, or, in other words, the right of every man to keep his affairs to himself, and to decide for himself to what extent they shall be the subject of public observation and discussion." Adopting an approach similar to the one presented by Ruth Gavison Nine years earlier, Sissela Bok said that privacy is "the condition of being protected from unwanted access by others—either physical access, personal information, or attention." (1989). 9780679724735, Vintage Books. ISBN 9780679724735
In addition to the psychological barrier of reserve, Kirsty Hughes identified three more kinds of privacy barriers: physical, behavioral, and normative. Physical barriers, such as walls and doors, prevent others from accessing and experiencing the individual. (In this sense, "accessing" an individual includes accessing personal information about them.) Behavioral barriers communicate to others—verbally, through language, or non-verbally, through personal space, body language, or clothing—that an individual does not want the other person to access or experience them. Lastly, normative barriers, such as laws and social norms, restrain others from attempting to access or experience an individual.
Johnson examined the following four stages to categorize where people exercise personal control: outcome choice control is the selection between various outcomes. Behaviour selection control is the selection between behavioural strategies to apply to attain selected outcomes. Outcome effectance describes the fulfillment of selected behaviour to achieve chosen outcomes. Outcome realization control is the personal interpretation of one’s achieved outcome. The relationship between two factors– primary and secondary control, is defined as the two-dimensional phenomenon where one reaches personal control: primary control describes behaviour directly causing outcomes, while secondary control is behaviour indirectly causing outcomes. Johnson explores the concept that privacy is a behaviour that has secondary control over outcomes.
Lorenzo Magnani expands on this concept by highlighting how privacy is essential in maintaining personal control over one's identity and consciousness. He argues that consciousness is partly formed by external representations of ourselves, such as narratives and data, which are stored outside the body. However, much of our consciousness consists of internal representations that remain private and are rarely externalized. This internal privacy, which Magnani refers to as a form of "information property" or "moral capital," is crucial for preserving free choice and personal agency. According to Magnani, when too much of our identity and data is externalized and subjected to scrutiny, it can lead to a loss of personal control, dignity, and responsibility. The protection of privacy, therefore, safeguards our ability to develop and pursue personal projects in our own way, free from intrusive external forces.
Acknowledging other conceptions of privacy while arguing that the fundamental concern of privacy is behavior selection control, Johnson converses with other interpretations including those of Maxine Wolfe and Robert S. Laufer, and Irwin Altman. He clarifies the continuous relationship between privacy and personal control, where outlined behaviours not only depend on privacy, but the conception of one’s privacy also depends on his defined behavioural outcome relationships.
In various legal contexts, when privacy is described as secrecy, a conclusion is reached: if privacy is secrecy, then rights to privacy do not apply for any information which is already publicly disclosed. When privacy-as-secrecy is discussed, it is usually imagined to be a selective kind of secrecy in which individuals keep some information secret and private while they choose to make other information public and not private.
Alternatively, Stanley Benn defined privacy in terms of a recognition of oneself as a subject with agency—as an individual with the capacity to choose. Privacy is required to exercise choice. Overt observation makes the individual aware of himself or herself as an object with a "determinate character" and "limited probabilities." Covert observation, on the other hand, changes the conditions in which the individual is exercising choice without his or her knowledge and consent.
In addition, privacy may be viewed as a state that enables autonomy, a concept closely connected to that of personhood. According to Joseph Kufer, an autonomous self-concept entails a conception of oneself as a "purposeful, self-determining, responsible agent" and an awareness of one's capacity to control the boundary between self and other—that is, to control who can access and experience him or her and to what extent. Furthermore, others must acknowledge and respect the self's boundaries—in other words, they must respect the individual's privacy.
The studies of psychologists such as Jean Piaget and Victor Tausk show that, as children learn that they can control who can access and experience them and to what extent, they develop an autonomous self-concept. In addition, studies of adults in particular institutions, such as Erving Goffman's study of "total institutions" such as prisons and mental institutions, suggest that systemic and routinized deprivations or violations of privacy deteriorate one's sense of autonomy over time.
In addition, privacy may be seen as a state that fosters personal growth, a process integral to the development of self-identity. Hyman Gross suggested that, without privacy—solitude, anonymity, and temporary releases from social roles—individuals would be unable to freely express themselves and to engage in self-discovery and self-criticism. Such self-discovery and self-criticism contributes to one's understanding of oneself and shapes one's sense of identity.
James Rachels advanced this notion by writing that privacy matters because "there is a close connection between our ability to control who has access to us and to information about us, and our ability to create and maintain different sorts of social relationships with different people." Protecting intimacy is at the core of the concept of sexual privacy, which law professor Danielle Citron argues should be protected as a unique form of privacy.
Physical privacy may be a matter of cultural sensitivity, personal dignity, and/or shyness. There may also be concerns about safety, if, for example one is wary of becoming the victim of crime or stalking. There are different things that can be prevented to protect one's physical privacy, including people watching (even through recorded images) one's intimate behaviours or and unauthorized access to one's personal possessions or places. Examples of possible efforts used to avoid the former, especially for modesty reasons, are clothes, , , privacy screens, cathedral glass, , etc.
Richard Posner and Lawrence Lessig focus on the economic aspects of personal information control. Posner criticizes privacy for concealing information, which reduces market efficiency. For Posner, employment is selling oneself in the labour market, which he believes is like selling a product. Any 'defect' in the 'product' that is not reported is fraud. For Lessig, privacy breaches online can be regulated through code and law. Lessig claims "the protection of privacy would be stronger if people conceived of the right as a property right", and that "individuals should be able to control information about themselves".
Priscilla Regan believes that individual concepts of privacy have failed philosophically and in policy. She supports a social value of privacy with three dimensions: shared perceptions, public values, and collective components. Shared ideas about privacy allows freedom of conscience and diversity in thought. Public values guarantee democratic participation, including freedoms of speech and association, and limits government power. Collective elements describe privacy as collective good that cannot be divided. Regan's goal is to strengthen privacy claims in policy making: "if we did recognize the collective or public-good value of privacy, as well as the common and public value of privacy, those advocating privacy protections would have a stronger basis upon which to argue for its protection".Regan, P. M. (1995). Legislating privacy: Technology, social values, and public policy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
Leslie Regan Shade argues that the human right to privacy is necessary for meaningful democratic participation, and ensures human dignity and autonomy. Privacy depends on norms for how information is distributed, and if this is appropriate. Violations of privacy depend on context. The human right to privacy has precedent in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Shade believes that privacy must be approached from a people-centered perspective, and not through the marketplace.Shade, L.R. (2008). "Reconsidering the right to privacy in Canada". Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 28(1), 80–91.
Dr. Eliza Watt, Westminster Law School, University of Westminster in London, UK, proposes application of the International Human Right Law (IHRL) concept of “virtual control” as an approach to deal with extraterritorial mass surveillance by state intelligence agencies. Dr. Watt envisions the “virtual control” test, understood as a remote control over the individual's right to privacy of communications, where privacy is recognized under the ICCPR, Article 17. This, she contends, may help to close the normative gap that is being exploited by nation states.Watt, Eliza. "The role of international human rights law in the protection of online privacy in the age of surveillance." In 2017 9th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon), pp. 1–14. IEEE, 2017.
Susan B. Barnes similarly used the term privacy paradox to refer to the ambiguous boundary between private and public space on social media. When compared to adults, young people tend to disclose more information on social media. However, this does not mean that they are not concerned about their privacy. Susan B. Barnes gave a case in her article: in a television interview about Facebook, a student addressed her concerns about disclosing personal information online. However, when the reporter asked to see her Facebook page, she put her home address, phone numbers, and pictures of her young son on the page.
The privacy paradox has been studied and scripted in different research settings. Several studies have shown this inconsistency between privacy attitudes and behavior among online users. However, by now an increasing number of studies have also shown that there are significant and at times large correlations between privacy concerns and information sharing behavior, which speaks against the privacy paradox. A meta-analysis of 166 studies published on the topic reported an overall small but significant relation between privacy concerns and informations sharing or use of privacy protection measures. So although there are several individual instances or anecdotes where behavior appear paradoxical, on average privacy concerns and privacy behaviors seem to be related, and several findings question the general existence of the privacy paradox.
However, the relationship between concerns and behavior is likely only small, and there are several arguments that can explain why that is the case. According to the Value-action gap, attitudes and behaviors are in general and in most cases not closely related. A main explanation for the partial mismatch in the context of privacy specifically is that users lack awareness of the risks and the degree of protection.Acquisti, A., & Gross, R. (2006, June). Imagined communities: Awareness, information sharing, and privacy on the Facebook. In Privacy enhancing technologies (pp. 36–58). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Users may underestimate the harm of disclosing information online. On the other hand, some researchers argue that the mismatch comes from lack of technology literacy and from the design of sites. For example, users may not know how to change their Privacy settings even though they care about their privacy. Psychologists Sonja Utz and Nicole C. Krämer particularly pointed out that the privacy paradox can occur when users must trade-off between their privacy concerns and impression management.Utz, S., & Kramer, N. (2009). The privacy paradox on social network sites revisited: The role of individual characteristics and group norms. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, article 1. [7]
Users of mobile applications generally have very little knowledge of how their personal data are used. When they decide which application to download, they typically are not able to effectively interpret the information provided by application vendors regarding the collection and use of personal data. Other research finds that this lack of interpretability means users are much more likely to be swayed by cost, functionality, design, ratings, reviews and number of downloads than requested permissions for usage of their personal data.
From 2004 to 2008, building from this and other historical precedents, Daniel J. Solove presented another classification of actions which are harmful to privacy, including collection of information which is already somewhat public, processing of information, sharing information, and invading personal space to get private information.
Companies like Google and Meta collect vast amounts of personal data from their users through various services and platforms. This data includes browsing habits, search history, location information, and even personal communications. These companies then analyze and aggregate this data to create detailed user profiles, which are sold to advertisers and other third parties. This practice is often done without explicit user consent, leading to an invasion of privacy as individuals have little control over how their information is used. The sale of personal data can result in targeted advertising, manipulation, and even potential security risks, as sensitive information can be exploited by malicious actors. This commercial exploitation of personal data undermines user trust and raises significant ethical and legal concerns regarding data protection and privacy rights.
There are various examples of this. Breach of confidentiality is when one entity promises to keep a person's information private, then breaks that promise. Disclosure is making information about a person more accessible in a way that harms the subject of the information, regardless of how the information was collected or the intent of making it available. Exposure is a special type of disclosure in which the information disclosed is emotional to the subject or taboo to share, such as revealing their private life experiences, their nudity, or perhaps private body functions. Increased accessibility means advertising the availability of information without actually distributing it, as in the case of doxing. Blackmail is making a threat to share information, perhaps as part of an effort to coerce someone. Appropriation is an attack on the personhood of someone, and can include using the value of someone's reputation or likeness to advance interests which are not those of the person being appropriated. Distortion is the creation of misleading information or lies about a person.
In a more non-technical sense, using incognito mode or private browsing mode will prevent a user's computer from saving history, Internet files, and cookies, but the ISP will still have access to the users' search history. Using Private browsing will not share a user's history, clicks, and will obstruct ad blockers.
Lack of privacy in public spaces, caused by overcrowding, increases health issues in animals, including heart disease and Hypertension. Also, the stress from overcrowding is connected to an increase in infant mortality rates and maternal stress. The lack of privacy that comes with overcrowding is connected to other issues in animals, which causes their relationships with others to diminish. How they present themselves to others of their species is a necessity in their life, and overcrowding causes the relationships to become disordered.
For example, David Attenborough claims that the gorilla's right to privacy is being violated when they are looked at through glass enclosures. They are aware that they are being looked at, therefore they do not have control over how much the onlookers can see of them. Gorillas and other animals may be in the enclosures due to safety reasons, however Attenborough states that this is not an excuse for them to be constantly watched by unnecessary eyes. Also, animals will start hiding in unobserved spaces. Animals in zoos have been found to exhibit harmful or different behaviours due to the presence of visitors watching them:
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