Situating privacy online: Complex perception and everyday practices

Media and research reports point to the issue of privacy as being key to understanding online behaviors and experiences. However, it is well recognised within privacy advocacy circles that “privacy ” is a loose concept encompassing a variety of meanings. In this paper we view privacy as mediating individuals and their online activities and not standing above them, being constantly redefined in actual practice. As such it is necessary to ask what individuals are reacting to when asked about online privacy and how it affects their online experience. Based on data generated in the Everyday Internet study, an ethnographic project being conducted in Toronto, Canada, we further propose that there are three organizing “moments ” of online privacy perceptions: the moment of sitting in front of the computer, the moment of the interactions with it, and the moment after the data has been released in “cyberspace”. We argue that while the third has been given much coverage, mainly through surveillance—Big Brother style—reporting, the other two moments have not been sufficiently researched something which may be crippling the formulation of effective privacy principles and practices within the public at large