Privacy is a fundamental human right and should never be violated, yet even in 2025, it often feels like a luxury good. IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach report pegs the average incident at $4.88 million—a record high—with one in three breaches involving “shadow data” that firms didn’t even know they held.
Although more than 160 countries now enforce omnibus privacy statutes, an ever-expanding web of apps, wearables, and AI assistants continues to vacuum up personal data faster than regulators can react.
In this environment, the uncomfortable question persists: "Can meaningful privacy survive the digital age, or has it already been priced beyond reach?"
Digital vs Personal: The Privacy Divide
To comprehend what is occurring to our right to privacy, it is necessary first to distinguish the traditional form of privacy from the new data privacy that has become controversial.
In the pre-digital era, privacy was a right relating to presence and confidential communications. Everyone had to be able to keep some things to themselves and could reasonably expect others to do likewise.
In the contemporary digital era, however, as more aspects of life are processed digitally, everything we do can be easily measured and traced. Data arises when private information becomes digitized and combined; all sorts of data must be gathered.
This trend of data-ism and reverence for algorithmic judgment has led to the disturbing habit in the technology sector of viewing consumers as mere data entry points to be harvested, analyzed, and cycled back into the system.
Because of the economics of most digital services valuing data collection over privacy, premium, ad-free experiences are now a luxury. This means that individuals have to pay to maintain control over their data and cease constant tracking, while other people who cannot or do not wish to pay are essentially trading their private information for unfettered access.
The Price of Personalized Experiences
Our information has become valuable in our contemporary digital environment, and we constantly relinquish it without fully valuing it. Companies receive much information regarding our details, tastes, and activities.
The information is then made profitable via targeted advertising, sales to third parties, or the utilization of customized information for influencing our choices. We trade our data privacy and our personal information, which is often worth much more than the "free" services we receive.
When price discrimination, customized pricing, or tailored advertising to induce wasteful expenditures are facilitated by the data, this invisible transaction leaves a financial mark on the people. The psychological effects are more disturbing: constant monitoring causes anxiety.
One of the most unsettling experiences—or perhaps a conspiracy theory—is wondering if our smartphones are watching us. Suspicions are heightened when someone discusses a topic with friends and then unexpectedly comes across advertisements for the same good or service.
The truth is, the microphones in smartphones are not always in use. Processing and storing such data would demand massive technical resources if they were operating around the clock. It would also be against several countries' privacy regulations.
How Personal Data Becomes a Commodity?
Companies like major social media platforms, search engines, and specialized data brokers build trillion-dollar businesses by collecting, analyzing, and monetizing user data. They profit through targeted advertising, selling consumer insights on their platforms.
Hyper-targeted advertisements that increase conversion rates are made possible by access to comprehensive personal data. With previously unheard-of accuracy, they can pinpoint the target audience, craft messaging according to psychological profiles, and connect with people at their most vulnerable times.
The Aarogya Setu app's release during COVID-19 in India made the issue of data piracy worse. Since its release, the app has had over 10 million downloads. The question of whether the information the software gathers is secure from hackers is still unanswered.
Hackers have a history of breaking into India's vital databases, and if the Aarogya Setu database is compromised, it might give the wrong individuals access to personal data like name, age, travel history, and health statistics.
"Since the app has been developed by the government, it will get a lot of attention from hackers. It is very difficult to track every single activity of an application user. Data is only safe when it's in the user's hands. Otherwise, it gets misplaced, lost or stolen," said ZoomINZ0D.
Digital Privacy: The New Status Symbol
The ironic reality of our hyperconnected world is that the more common digital technologies become for everyone in all socioeconomic strata, the more authentic privacy is now a luxury commodity available to the minority who can afford it.
In the digital era, real privacy costs more than a paid premium service. It takes time, technical knowledge, and vigilant attention to detail—accommodations that are not equally available in all segments of society.
Expensive high-tech devices with stronger security protections, secure communications software, VPN services, and professional security consulting are all within the budgets of the affluent.
The wealthy frequently have the freedom to opt out of privacy-violating systems with little penalty. An executive may decline to utilize specific monitoring apps or social media sites without compromising their career.
Conversely, gig workers, retail staff, and most service professionals are increasingly subjected to mandatory monitoring as a prerequisite for employment, ranging from biometric time clocks to productivity monitoring software.
Even the process of reading and comprehending privacy policies is a luxury. Research indicates it would take the typical individual around 30 consecutive working days to read all the privacy policies they come across - time that many working-class people with multiple jobs or caring responsibilities simply do not have.
Final Byte
Those lucky enough to obtain data privacy have benefits in the contemporary surveillance economy. They possess economic security through protection from predatory advertising and price discrimination.
Privacy-privileged subjects have more autonomy from manipulation by algorithms programmed to use individual weaknesses. They can examine thoughts, engage politically, and produce creatively without fear of permanent digital recordation.
The benefits identified here offer strong evidence that privacy protections are better as universal rights than premium features, protecting the ability to control one's personal information as a liberty available to all members of society, not merely those who can afford to buy it.
Edited by Harshajit Sarmah
