Three Components of Privacy

Most of us feel vulnerable to a loss of privacy in the internet age.

I want to simplify (oversimplify?) what I think are the different aspects to our concerns.

In my opinion privacy actually has three components: secrecy, security, and exposure.

Are these three things different?

To me they are.

There are things that we may want to keep secret because we consider them shameful or could negatively effect our relationships or livelihood.

Exposure deals with making public everyday likes and dislikes, whereabouts, financial and medical information, phone numbers and any number of daily facts and figures and descriptions, etc that make up the fabric of our lives.

Disclosure of all of the above create anxiety because of the reality that our security can be threatened and it could be putting us and others in physical and emotional danger.

All together these components are an invasion of our PRIVACY because we have little or no control over how we CHOOSE to represent ourselves to others and it trounces on our desire to MONITOR and CONTROL what we share.