Information Privacy - A Definition

Information is the heart of what makes each of us who we are. If I had all the information about any single person (albeit an extremely unlikely endeavour), I could conveivable BE that person to, and for all but the most intimate of acquaintences.

Information even transcends physicality in some cases. Take the hypothetical and extreme example of identifying someone you are close to, who's appearance has been dramatically, surgically altered. Assume that there were no longer physical attributes that you could certifiably relate to the individual. No fingerprints, no voice prints. You could only rely on something that person knows, in order to identify them. Of course it would have to be something that both of you know in common, and is relatively obscure. This ends up, by the way, being one of the three well-known human authentication factors. More on that in another post.

Information can be adequately defined as a collection of data about a specific topic, or less specifically, as knowledge. This is different from data in that data is just a collection of symbols, signs, and measures. Information implies knowledge about the data.

Privacy can be defined simply as "for one's use only". This should not be confused totally with the term security, which means literally the act of securing something from others.

Taken together, what we are speaking of is an individual's right to keep information that belongs to them out of the hands of others. Granted, data security is often a consideration in the enforcement of Information Privacy, but it is only a part of the story. We will explore the depths of information privacy, current concerns, and methodologies for securing data and ensuring personal privacy of information.