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The key research objective of the current study is to answer the following research question: Why is ‘privacy' a contested concept that is hard to define? In doing so, the study will raise awareness of the contemporary meaning of ‘privacy' in relation to cyber activities and to draw attention to the need for developing the right to cyber privacy and its legal protection. Hence, the current study has embarked on analysing the meaning of privacy in general, and the meaning of cyber or online privacy in particular. As a result, privacy has been found to be a perennially contestable concept, and this is exacerbated by the ever more rapidly developing digital world and also by the diverse perceptions which vary across societies, cultures, and generations. This has created a big challenge for regulators and legislators to define a specific privacy right that can be accorded with a legal protection against violations across national and international jurisdictions. However, the right to privacy has been found to be vague and open to multiple, competing interpretations.

Protecting users' privacy rights has become a great challenge during the age of technological advancement in areas of digital media and digital communication, such as the internet and e-commerce. Dissemination of personal data over networks has become quite easy, widespread, and uncontrollable. This has created various concerns for online consumers in regard to privacy breaches and made it quite difficult for current regulations and statutes to address data confidentiality violations in many national states. Therefore, the paper discusses one of the contemporary challenging issues: the challenge of new technology and e-commerce to the right to privacy. The aim of this paper is to investigate the implementation of the right to privacy and the effectiveness of the current USA legal system in governing online transactions by drawing on the various notions embedded in the concept of privacy in general and e-privacy in particular. The method adopted for the legal perspective is case studies, where the USA legal context will be explored.