# Privacy explained

Plainly, privacy is the obscuring of [information](information.md) that would otherwise be accessible by others.

- In particular, the most important information is personally identifiable information (PII).

The trouble with privacy is that it can come from multiple motivations:

1. A desire to [protect something](safety.md) that ought to be protected (e.g., not disclosing a password).
2. The desire to obscure information for malicious reasons (e.g., using a void of information to communicate [lies](people-lying.md)).