A nebulous philosophical, legal, social and technological concept which means different things to different observers. In an influential 1890 Harvard Law Review article, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, who later became a Supreme Court Justice, famously defined privacy as “a right to be let alone.” Common areas of privacy that are of particular interest with regard to data protection and privacy laws include information privacy, bodily privacy, territorial privacy, and communications privacy.

Four main areas of privacy are of particular interest with regard to data protection and privacy laws and practices: information privacy, bodily privacy, territorial privacy, and communications privacy.