Privacy Glossary

Browse 52 privacy terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

52 Privacy Terms

Ad Blocker
Software, usually a browser extension or built-in browser feature, that prevents ads and often trackers from loading on websites. In tech culture ad blockers...
Aggregation Attack
An attack where individually harmless pieces of information are combined to infer sensitive data or reveal protected patterns. Aggregation attacks matter in...
AI Privacy
The protection of personal, sensitive, or confidential information when AI systems collect, process, store, or generate data. AI privacy concerns include...
Burner Account
A secondary or disposable account used for privacy, testing, anonymity, or limited-purpose activity. In online culture burner accounts may be practical, shady,...
Confidential Computing
Hardware-based technology that protects data during processing by performing computation in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). Even the cloud provider's...
Confidentiality
The security property that information is accessible only to authorized parties and not exposed to unauthorized disclosure. Confidentiality is one of the three...
Cookie
Cookie is a small piece of data that a web server sends to a user's browser, which stores it and sends it back with subsequent requests to the same server....
Cookie Banner
A banner or pop-up on a website asking users to accept, reject, or manage cookie and tracking preferences. In web culture cookie banners are associated with...
Data Anonymization
The process of altering data so individuals can no longer be identified from it, directly or through practical linkage attacks. Strong anonymization is hard...
Data Breach
An incident where sensitive, protected, or confidential data is accessed, disclosed, or stolen by an unauthorized party. The event that turns a security team's...
Data Broker
A company that collects, buys, aggregates, and sells personal or behavioral data about individuals, households, or organizations. In security and privacy work,...
Data Destruction
The deliberate and verifiable elimination of data so it cannot be reconstructed from storage media or systems. Depending on the medium and sensitivity, that...
Data Ethics
The ethical questions surrounding how data is collected, stored, used, shared, and interpreted, including privacy, consent, fairness, and power. In modern...
Data Leakage
The unauthorized exposure or escape of sensitive data through technical flaws, misconfiguration, insecure handling, or accidental sharing. Leakage can happen...
Data Masking
Data Masking is the replacement or transformation of sensitive values so data can be used without revealing the original content. Security teams use it to...
Data Privacy
The discipline of controlling how personal or sensitive data is collected, used, shared, retained, and deleted in line with expectations, law, and policy. It...
Data Subject
The identifiable person whose personal data is being collected, stored, processed, or shared. In privacy law and security governance, many rights and...
Differential Privacy
A mathematical framework that provides provable privacy guarantees by adding calibrated noise to query results or model training. Ensures that the output of an...
Digital Footprint
The trail of data, content, activity, and identifiers a person or organization leaves across digital systems. In internet culture digital footprint is often...
Digital Privacy
The ability to control how personal or sensitive information is collected, used, stored, and shared in digital environments. In modern culture digital privacy...
DNS over HTTPS
DNS over HTTPS is a method of transporting DNS queries over HTTPS to improve privacy and resist straightforward interception. Security teams use it to enforce...
DNS over TLS
DNS over TLS is a protocol for sending DNS queries over TLS so intermediaries cannot easily read or modify them. Security teams use it to enforce trust, reduce...
DoH
Short for DNS over HTTPS, a protocol that sends DNS queries through encrypted HTTPS connections instead of traditional plaintext DNS. It improves privacy and...
Edge AI
Running AI models directly on local devices (phones, cameras, IoT) rather than in the cloud, reducing latency and keeping data private. The reason your phone...
Encrypted DNS
DNS resolution sent over encrypted protocols such as DoH or DoT so intermediaries cannot easily read or tamper with queries in plaintext. It improves privacy...
Encrypted Messaging
Messaging systems that protect message contents with encryption so unauthorized parties cannot read them in transit and, in end-to-end designs, not even the...
Encryption
Encryption is the process of converting readable data (plaintext) into an unreadable format (ciphertext) using a mathematical algorithm and a cryptographic...
End-to-End Encryption
End-to-End Encryption is a communication design where only endpoints hold the keys needed to read protected content. Security teams use it to enforce trust,...
Federated Learning
A machine learning approach where models are trained across multiple devices or servers holding local data, without exchanging the raw data. Each participant...
GLBA
Short for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a US law that imposes privacy and information-security obligations on financial institutions handling consumer financial...
HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — a US federal law that sets standards for protecting sensitive patient health information (PHI). In...
Homomorphic Encryption
An encryption scheme that allows computation on encrypted data without decrypting it first — the result, when decrypted, matches the result of performing the...
Information Disclosure
Information Disclosure is the exposure of sensitive information to parties that were not meant to receive it. Security teams use it to enforce trust, reduce...
K-Anonymity
A privacy property in which each record in a released dataset is indistinguishable from at least k-1 other records with respect to a chosen set of identifying...
L-Diversity
A privacy model that extends k-anonymity by requiring each anonymized group to contain at least l well-represented values for sensitive attributes, reducing...
Machine Unlearning
Techniques aimed at removing the influence of specific data from a trained model without fully retraining it from scratch. Machine unlearning is discussed in...
Off the Grid
Disconnected from the usual network, cloud, or communication systems, either literally or by intention. In tech it can describe isolated systems, offline...
Opt-Out
A mechanism that allows a user to decline or stop a type of data collection, sharing, tracking, or participation after it would otherwise occur by default. In...
Perfect Forward Secrecy
A cryptographic property where compromise of a long-term key does not expose previously captured session traffic. It shows up in application security,...
Personal Security
The practices and protections an individual uses to secure their accounts, devices, data, and physical safety against digital threats such as phishing, account...
PII
Short for personally identifiable information, data that can identify, contact, or distinguish a specific individual directly or when combined with other...
Privacy
The discipline of controlling how personal or sensitive information is collected, used, shared, stored, and deleted in accordance with expectations, rights,...
Privacy Engineer
An engineer who designs and implements systems, controls, and product changes to protect personal data and meet privacy requirements. Privacy engineers often...
Privacy Policy
A published statement describing what personal data an organization collects, how it uses that data, who it shares it with, and what choices or rights users...
Protected Health Information
Health-related information linked to an identifiable individual and protected under regulations such as HIPAA in the United States. Protected health...
Recording Security
The protection of recorded security-relevant material such as session captures, call recordings, screen recordings, or surveillance footage so it cannot be...
Synthetic Data
Artificially generated data that mimics the statistical properties of real data without containing actual personal or sensitive information. Used to augment...
Synthetic Data
Artificially generated data that mimics the statistical properties of real data, used when real data is scarce, expensive, or privacy-sensitive. The model...
Tor Project
The open-source project and organization behind Tor, which routes internet traffic through relays to improve privacy and anonymity.
Unlearning
Techniques for removing or suppressing specific information, behaviors, or data influence from a trained model without fully retraining from scratch.
VPN
VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a technology that creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and a remote server, routing your internet traffic...
zero-knowledge proof
A cryptographic method that allows one party (the prover) to convince another party (the verifier) that a statement is true without revealing any information...

Related Topics