Privacy is especially difficult to define because it means different things to different people. Each of us has our own privacy needs. Women often have different privacy concerns than men; asking a 9-year-old child his age over the Net has different privacy implications from asking the same question of a middle-aged adult. A question that may not be seen as violating our privacy in one situation could have that appearance in another.

Even being asked to define your privacy boundaries can be an invasion of your privacy. By naming areas of your life that you wish to have kept private you are in essence calling attention to some areas over others and revealing something about yourself that you might prefer not to reveal. The simple act of opting in or opting out is information about you.

All of this makes it very difficult to codify privacy into laws and regulations.