Skip to main content

Privacy

  • Reference work entry

Definition

Privacy helps to establish personal autonomy and create individualism. Privacy is a state or condition of limited access to a person (e.g., client). In particular, information privacy relates to an individual’s right to determine how, when, and to what extent information about the self will be released to another person or to an organization.

Key Points

With the rising occurrence of information privacy violations, people have begun to take interest in how, when, and where their personal information is being used. People usually interchange the concepts of security with privacy. In fact, they are essentially two different concepts used to protect data. In general, security involves the use of cryptographic tools to protect information in terms of confidentiality, availability, and access control and integrity enforcement. Privacy mainly focuses on the ability of keeping data away from public access, and the way to protect it according to the individual rights.

There are...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   2,500.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. Anderson R.J. A security policy model for clinical information systems. In Proc. 1996 IEEE Symp. on Security and Privacy, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Westin A. Privacy and freedom. New York, Atheneum, 1967.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry

Hung, P.C.K., Cheng, V.S.Y. (2009). Privacy. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_274

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics