Digital privacy[2] refers to the practice of managing and safeguarding personal information that is collected, processed, stored, and shared in the digital space. It encompasses various dimensions including information privacy[1], communication privacy, and individual privacy rights. Information privacy allows people to have control over their digital data, while communication privacy ensures secure online interactions. Individual privacy rights involve the right to choose the level of online exposure and managing unwanted information. Digital privacy also involves the use of technologies and tools, like VPNs and IP-address changers, that provide secure connections and protect users from tracking and surveillance. It is a crucial aspect of the digital world that is surrounded by various challenges, including data breaches, lack of transparency, and trust issues with tech companies. The importance of digital privacy has grown with increasing user awareness and the advent of new technologies like AI, which present new privacy concerns.
Digital privacy is often used in contexts that promote advocacy on behalf of individual and consumer privacy rights in e-services and is typically used in opposition to the business practices of many e-marketers, businesses, and companies to collect and use such information and data. Digital privacy can be defined under three sub-related categories: information privacy, communication privacy, and individual privacy.
Digital privacy has increasingly become a topic of interest as information and data shared over the social web have continued to become more and more commodified; social media users are now considered unpaid "digital labors", as one pays for "free" e-services through the loss of their privacy. For example, between 2005 and 2011, the change in levels of disclosure for different profile items on Facebook shows that, over the years, people have wanted to keep more information private. Observing the seven-year span, Facebook gained a profit of $100 billion through the collection and sharing of their users' data with third-party advertisers.
The more a user shares on social networks, the more privacy is lost. All of the information and data one shares is connected to clusters of similar information. As the user continues to share their productive expression, it gets matched with the respective cluster, and their speech and expression are no longer only in the possession of them or of their social circle. This can be seen as a consequence of building social capital. As people create new and diverse ties on social networks, data becomes linked. This decrease in privacy continues until bundling appears (when the ties become strong and the network more homogeneous).
Some laws allow filing a case against a breach of digital privacy. In 2007, for instance, a class-action lawsuit was lodged on behalf of all Facebook users that led Facebook to close its advertising system, "Beacon." In a similar case in 2010, the users sued Facebook once again for sharing personal user information with advertisers through their gaming application. Laws are based on consumers' consent and assume that the consumers are already empowered to know their own best interests. Therefore, for the past few years, people have been focusing on self-management of digital privacy through rational and educated decision-making.
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