ABSTRACT
Privacy has been a concern for hundreds or thousands of years. Despite that history, advocates have struggled to explain to others why privacy is important.
Even today, the best that many scholars can offer is that privacy violations are ‘creepy’. In some special cases, there might be concerns about identity theft or physical security against stalkers, but to privacy advocates disclosure of personal data is bad even without such specific risks.
Computers, of course, have magnified privacy as a concern. Scholars have been studying this aspect for more than 60 years, and while there have been some new insights, mostly involving the government, we still lack a general understanding. Even worse, newer privacy issues arise when distinct databases are combined …
Bellovin, Steven M and Kochar, Shreya, Quantifying Creepiness: Using Predictive Privacy to Measure Privacy Harms (December 18, 2025), Georgetown University Law Center Research Paper Forthcoming.
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