"When Privacy Is Threatened"
Angus Young
HKU Bulletin
Published in November 2025
Breaches of privacy in the digital age can open the door to cybercrimes. Dr Angus Young of the Faculty of Law considers the legal implications.
The prospect of having one’s personal information taken and used without consent has become an ever more urgent problem. Prior to the proliferation of computers, and later digital networks, such information could only be accessed in physical form. Now, with an internet connection and some savvy software, almost anyone can obtain personal, identifying details about someone from anywhere in the world.
“The harm of having little to no privacy is that one loses one’s individuality, on the one hand. But on the other hand, it actually makes cybercrimes, such as scams and fraud, much easier,” said Dr Angus Young, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, who teaches postgraduate students about privacy and the law.
Modern technology enables criminals to scrape personal information, such as photos or videos, from social media and other sources and use them to create deep fakes. In early 2024, for instance, a finance worker in a multinational firm in Hong Kong was tricked into believing they were on a video conference call with a senior member of the firm; the worker transferred HK$200 million to the fraudster.
“Thousands of people are losing money over scams all over the world. We are not talking about uneducated or particularly vulnerable people – professionals are affected, too. A lot of this starts with the loss of privacy,” Dr Young said.
Way behind
Unfortunately, laws to protect privacy are uneven across the world...
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