There was a time when luxury meant being seen. The right car, the right watch, the right restaurant or the perfect holiday photograph from an exotic destination. Today, the ultimate luxury may be the opposite: the ability not to be seen at all.
Our phones know where we go, platforms remember what we search and algorithms study what we click. Apps collect fragments of our behaviour, building increasingly detailed pictures of our lives. Privacy, therefore, is no longer simply about keeping secrets. It is about control: who accesses our information, what they do with it and how much we can decide for ourselves.
The Business of Knowing Us
We have entered an era in which convenience knows us remarkably well. Google Maps anticipates where we are going, streaming platforms predict what we might watch and shopping websites remember products we viewed days earlier. Every search, purchase, location signal and viewing habit adds to a digital portrait. The question is no longer merely what information we share, but what algorithms can infer from information we never consciously intended to disclose.
The numbers explain the growing unease. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 5,101 American adults found that 81 per cent were concerned about how companies used the data they collected, while 73 per cent felt they had little or no control over it. Yet 56 per cent frequently clicked ‘agree’ on privacy policies without reading them. We worry about surveillance but surrender our information for convenience.
The implications extend beyond targeted advertising. What we search can reveal our interests and intentions; purchases expose preferences; regular travel patterns reveal routines. Individually, these details may seem insignificant. Collectively, they can become remarkably revealing.
The economic consequences could be equally significant. In 2024, the US Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry into ‘surveillance pricing’, examining how companies might use consumer data and algorithms to categorise customers and influence prices. The information under examination included location, demographics, credit history, browsing behaviour and shopping history. Personal data is no longer valuable merely because it helps businesses sell products. It can potentially influence how they assess and approach individual consumers.
Artificial intelligence raises the stakes further. AI systems can process enormous volumes of information and identify patterns difficult for humans to detect. Yet public trust has not kept pace. Pew found that among Americans who had heard of AI, 70 per cent had little or no trust in companies to make responsible decisions about its use. Around eight in ten believed information collected by companies would be used in ways that made people uncomfortable or beyond its original purpose.
India’s Digital Exposure
For India, the challenge is particularly urgent because digital adoption has expanded at extraordinary speed. The country had 958 million active internet users in 2025, according to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India report, with rural India accounting for 57 per cent of users.
But awareness of data rights has not necessarily kept pace. A PwC India survey found that 56 per cent of consumers were unaware of their rights concerning personal data, 70 per cent found privacy policies difficult to understand and only 16 per cent knew about India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act. Meanwhile, 69 per cent felt their data might not be safe with companies.
CERT-In recorded 29,44,248 cyber-security incidents in 2025, compared with 14,02,809 in 2021. These figures cover a wider range of incidents, not just personal-data breaches, but illustrate the scale of India’s digital-security challenge.
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 provide a regulatory framework. But legislation alone cannot create a culture of privacy. People must understand their rights and know how to exercise them.
Consider an ordinary morning in India. You unlock your phone with your fingerprint, check WhatsApp, make a UPI payment, book a cab, search for a medicine, scroll through Instagram and use Maps to reach work. By lunchtime, you may have interacted with several digital platforms without giving much thought to the information you have shared.
The privacy debate goes beyond hackers and stolen passwords. It concerns how routinely we surrender information, what algorithms can infer from it and how much control we retain.
When Visibility Loses its Appeal
Privacy is being eroded not only by corporations and technology but also by our willingness to make our lives public. Social media has encouraged a simple equation: visibility equals relevance. We post holiday photographs, tag restaurants, announce achievements, share relationships and document everyday experiences. Followers become influence, engagement becomes validation and personal moments become content. We have gradually become publicists of our own lives.
Yet this culture of constant exposure is beginning to produce an interesting reversal. When everybody is visible, invisibility becomes exclusive. The person who does not announce every movement appears mysterious. The executive who cannot be reached at midnight seems to possess something increasingly scarce: boundaries. A holiday without Instagram updates, a dinner without photographs and a conversation that never becomes a screenshot can feel like small acts of luxury.
Luxury has always depended on scarcity. Digital life has changed what is scarce. Photographs, opinions and content are abundant. Attention is constantly demanded and access is almost instantaneous. But silence, anonymity, uninterrupted time and genuine privacy are becoming harder to find.
The New Digital Divide
Wealth has traditionally bought privacy through private homes, cars, offices and security. The digital world may be creating a similar divide. Those with greater resources can afford premium services, stronger cyber-security, professional reputation management and technologies offering greater control. Others may have fewer alternatives to digital ecosystems in which convenience comes at the cost of personal data.
The new luxury, therefore, may not simply be secrecy. It may be the ability to choose how much of ourselves becomes measurable.
Time, too, has become a privacy issue. Before smartphones, leaving the office often meant leaving work behind. Today, messages follow us into dinner, holidays and weekends. Permanent connectivity has created an expectation of permanent availability. Being unreachable for a few hours can now feel like an act of resistance.
None of this means technology is the villain. Data can make services smarter, businesses more efficient and everyday life easier. AI has enormous potential in medicine, education, accessibility and research. Personalisation can be genuinely useful. The real question is whether convenience leaves meaningful room for choice. Privacy should not require abandoning modern life; it should mean retaining authority over which parts of our lives technology can access.
Freedom to Remain Unseen
For decades, luxury advertising encouraged us to be noticed: wear this, drive this, visit this place and show the world you have arrived. The next generation of luxury may be defined by the opposite: a private conversation, an undocumented holiday, an undisclosed location, an evening without notifications or a memory shared only by those who experienced it.
We once associated status with more possessions, followers, attention and access. In an age of algorithms and permanent digital footprints, having less exposure may become far more desirable.
Privacy is not about hiding. It is about deciding who gets access, what gets recorded, when we are reachable and which parts of our lives remain our own.For years, status meant being noticed. The future may make something else far more desirable: the freedom not to be watched.
