A 2024 Cisco survey showed that 89% of respondents say they care about data privacy, but only 38% take concrete steps to protect it.
Online privacy could become a luxury rather than a fundamental right, warns Thomas Bunting, an analyst at the British innovation institute Nesta, who talks about a future where smart devices can collect and share more and more data about users. According to him, in a possible future scenario, even smart refrigerators could share information about users’ eating habits with health insurance companies. Although such a development is not inevitable, for many people the idea remains worrying.
However, Bunting himself says he doesn’t believe there has ever been complete privacy on the internet. “We’ve become accustomed to living with this reality,” he says, adding that users often accept the use of their data as a kind of “currency” in exchange for free services, such as social networks.
He recalls that when he was about 15, a teacher asked his class if they considered privacy an important principle to protect. “No one raised their hand,” he says. According to him, even today many people who decide to leave social media do so because of too much screen time or fear of addiction, but rarely because of privacy issues. Cybersecurity expert Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey says people should be concerned about online privacy, as it is directly related to the control over their lives. “When I hear people say they don’t care about privacy, I ask them why they have curtains in their bedrooms,” he says.
According to Woodward, privacy concerns are often interpreted as “having something to hide,” but in reality it’s about protecting freedom of thought, experimentation, and personal development without constant surveillance.
He warns that the feeling that people are constantly being monitored can lead to self-censorship, undermining freedom of expression and, indirectly, democracy. The tech industry has developed hundreds of privacy-protecting tools, such as private browsers, encrypted messaging apps, password managers, tracker blockers and virtual private networks (VPNs). However, the numbers show that the risk remains high. According to data analytics company Statista, in 2024 alone, more than 1.35 billion people worldwide were affected by leaks or attacks that compromised their data. Cybersecurity experts often point to a paradox: even though users have more tools to control their privacy than ever before, in practice they may have less real privacy.
There are about 160 national privacy laws around the world, according to Cisco. In Europe and the United Kingdom, for example, users must accept “cookies” every time they visit a website, small programs that collect data about online activity.
However, many users find this process an inconvenience. This is related to what experts call the “privacy paradox,” the gap between people’s expressed concerns about privacy and their actual online behavior.
A 2024 Cisco survey found that 89% of respondents said they care about data privacy, but only 38% are taking concrete steps to protect it. Researcher Carissa Véliz, author of the book “Privacy is Power,” says that many people feel powerless to protect their privacy. “People often feel like they have no control,” she says, adding that part of the problem is that many forms of surveillance are beyond the control of users. However, according to her, privacy is not completely lost. Véliz emphasizes that a multi-pronged approach is needed: stronger regulators, more accountable technology companies, and users choosing services that collect less data about them.
According to her, this also requires a cultural shift in the way people use technology. “It’s not enough to just have the right technology, we also need to use it,” she concludes.