In technical areas like information technology, clear definitions are essential. They form the foundation for building effective systems and applications. However, it is common to take certain terms for granted and use them without fully understanding their precise meanings. Two concepts that are often confused are “security” and “privacy.”
Having written extensively about information security, I realized I had not properly distinguished between these two important ideas. Observing the frequent mixing of these terms, I decided to clarify my own understanding by defining them distinctly.
Understanding Security and Privacy
In the realm of information technology, what do security and privacy really mean?
Security refers to the measures that prevent unauthorized access to or modification of data.
Privacy involves controlling who can observe your activities or access your data, limiting it only to parties you explicitly allow.
Though related, these concepts differ in critical ways, which become clearer through examples.
Consider a scenario where security is present but privacy is not: Spotify uses encryption and digital rights management (DRM) to ensure that only authorized users can stream music and prevent unauthorized copying or sharing of files. This means the content is secure, as unauthorized access is blocked. However, privacy is not guaranteed since anyone with an account can access the service, and the company cannot restrict user identities beyond that.
Social media platforms offer a more complex case. When users agree to terms and conditions, their data is shared with authorized partners and affiliates. If all these parties protect the data from breaches, the data remains secure. However, users lose privacy because they cannot control how their information is shared or used once it is on these platforms.
These examples highlight a crucial point: privacy includes security, but security alone does not ensure privacy. To put it simply, having privacy means having control over your data’s use, which necessarily requires security, but being secure doesn’t guarantee that control.
Mobile Devices: Secure Yet Not Private
A common misunderstanding concerns mobile devices. Some believe mobile platforms lack security because they do not fully protect privacy. In reality, mobile operating systems prioritize security to keep users’ data protected and out of the hands of competitors, but this doesn’t always translate to privacy.
Features often presented as privacy protections, such as app permission controls, primarily serve to restrict data access among competing apps and protect the platform’s interests. Native apps often receive broader permissions and function more fully, while third-party apps are sandboxed, isolated from one another, and limited in what data they can access. This design ensures that the mobile operating system itself has extensive control over data collection and usage.
Furthermore, the most significant security feature of mobile devices is the denial of root access to users and applications. While this protects the system from malware and unauthorized changes, it also limits users’ ability to modify the system for enhanced privacy. In essence, mobile security mechanisms are designed mainly to protect the device and its ecosystem, rather than to maximize individual user privacy.
