Personalization and privacy

84 August 2000/Vol. 43, No. 8 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM Many people don’t like to have others learn information about them. Ironically, those same people are usually quite happy to learn information about others, and sometimes resent it when legal barriers block them from learning such information. Nonetheless, when it comes to information about us, many believe we should have (in the words of various privacy advocates) a legal “right to control information about ourselves.” Do we currently have such a legal right to control the flow of information about ourselves by stopping others from speaking about us? The answer, as is typical in law, is “sometimes.” First, the one thing that’s not helpful here is to talk in general terms about our right to privacy. The Personalization and PRIVACY Eugene Volokh