A Metric for Calculating the Extent of Non-Knowledge (Level) of Personal Privacy

Personal privacy, in various aspects, has occupied humanity since the dawn of civilization, evolving and changing throughout human history. For the last two decades, the privacy issue has persistently remained the focus of public attention. Privacy, especially different aspects of personal privacy¹, continues to be at the center of public debate. This growing preoccupation with personal privacy stems from the great changes [1] that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have brought about in all walks of life during the last twenty years. The information revolution has made it possible to translate personal privacy into personal privacy information and, consequently, to discuss personal privacy in terms of personal privacy information. According to Shannon’s information theory [2]. Information is measurable and quantifiable, so discussing personal privacy information allows us to replace a qualitative discussion of the definitions and essence of personal privacy with a quantitative discussion of the degree of one’s privacy in each state of affairs. In this article, I will introduce a metric for quantifying and measuring personal privacy in each situation. This metric is based on the concept of “social distance” [3], which is equivalent to personal privacy. We will see how, with insights from information theory and the technological capabilities of ICTs, the abstract concept of social distance can be quantified and measured.