In the Certified Information Privacy Technologist (CIPT) curriculum, Blackmail and Appropriation are two of the privacy harms in Daniel Solove's Taxonomy of Privacy. Both belong to the Information Dissemination category, which covers harms that arise when personal data is revealed, spread or exploi…In the Certified Information Privacy Technologist (CIPT) curriculum, Blackmail and Appropriation are two of the privacy harms in Daniel Solove's Taxonomy of Privacy. Both belong to the Information Dissemination category, which covers harms that arise when personal data is revealed, spread or exploited. Other harms in this category include breach of confidentiality, disclosure, exposure, increased accessibility and distortion.
Blackmail is the threat to disclose personal information unless the victim meets a demand, usually for money, services or compliance. The harm does not depend on the information actually being released. The individual loses control and is coerced because someone holds compromising data about them. In a technology setting, blackmail can follow a data breach. Examples include attackers threatening to publish stolen medical records, intimate images or browsing histories. It can also arise in ransomware 'double extortion' schemes, where criminals encrypt systems and also threaten to leak exfiltrated data. Privacy technologists reduce this risk through data minimization, encryption, strong access controls, secure retention and destruction policies, and breach response planning. Data that is never collected, or that has been properly destroyed, cannot be used as leverage.
Appropriation is the use of a person's identity, name, likeness or other personal attributes to serve another party's aims, typically commercial, without consent. Its roots are in the privacy tort of misappropriation and the right of publicity. Examples include using a customer's photo or testimonial in advertising without permission, or featuring users' profiles in sponsored endorsements. Training AI models to generate content mimicking a real person's voice or face can also be appropriation. The harm lies in exploiting the individual's identity and denying them control over how they are represented.
For CIPT practitioners, addressing both harms means applying privacy by design. Key practices include:
- clear notice and meaningful consent;
- purpose limitation, so data is used only for the reasons stated;
- protective defaults;
- lifecycle controls covering secure dissemination and timely destruction.
Together, these measures reduce opportunities to coerce individuals or exploit their identities.
Blackmail and Appropriation: Solove's Dissemination Harms Explained for the CIPT Exam
Overview Blackmail and appropriation are two of the privacy harms that Daniel Solove placed in the Information Dissemination group of his Taxonomy of Privacy. The CIPT (Certified Information Privacy Technologist) exam uses this taxonomy heavily. You will often get a scenario, be asked which privacy harm it describes, and then be asked which technical or design control reduces that harm.
Why It Is Important
A shared vocabulary for harm. Solove's taxonomy gives technologists, lawyers and product teams one language for privacy problems. Naming a harm correctly (blackmail rather than disclosure, for example) points you to the right control.
Real-world relevance. Several modern threats are forms of blackmail:
ransomware 'double extortion', where attackers threaten to leak stolen data;
sextortion;
insider threats.
Several are forms of appropriation:
deepfakes;
AI training on people's likeness or voice;
social ads that use a person's name or photo;
identity misuse.
Privacy by Design. A CIPT is expected to anticipate these harms during design and to build in controls rather than react after the damage is done.
Legal exposure. Appropriation matches the long-standing US privacy tort of 'appropriation of name or likeness' from Prosser's four privacy torts. It also overlaps with right-of-publicity laws and biometric laws such as Illinois BIPA. Blackmail is a crime in most jurisdictions.
Where They Sit in Solove's Taxonomy Solove's taxonomy has four groups:
Information Collection: surveillance and interrogation.
Information Processing: aggregation, identification, insecurity, secondary use and exclusion.
Information Dissemination: breach of confidentiality, disclosure, exposure, increased accessibility, blackmail, appropriation and distortion.
Invasion: intrusion and decisional interference.
Remember that blackmail and appropriation are dissemination harms. Both involve using or threatening to spread information about a person.
What Is Blackmail? Definition: Blackmail is the threat to disclose personal information about someone unless they meet a demand, such as paying money, providing services or giving up data. The harm is the power and control the holder gains over the victim. It exists even if the information is never actually released.
Key characteristics:
It involves a threat of disclosure, not necessarily disclosure itself.
It creates a coercive, dependent relationship.
The information is usually sensitive or embarrassing. Examples include health, sexual, financial and criminal-history data.
The holder may have obtained the information legitimately, such as an employee or service provider, or illegitimately, such as a hacker.
Examples:
Ransomware gangs steal customer records and threaten to publish them unless a ransom is paid (double extortion).
Attackers who breached a dating or affair website email users and threaten to tell their spouses (the Ashley Madison aftermath).
Sextortion scams that claim to have webcam recordings.
A rogue insider threatens to leak an executive's medical records.
What Is Appropriation? Definition: Appropriation is the use of a person's identity or personality, such as their name, likeness, image, voice or reputation, to serve another person's aims or interests. This is usually done for commercial gain and without consent. The harm is the loss of control over how one's identity is presented and exploited.
Key characteristics:
The focus is on identity being used, not on secret facts being revealed. The information may even be public.
It is typically commercial or self-serving.
It lacks meaningful consent.
It can damage dignity and autonomy even when the use is flattering.
Examples:
A social network shows a user's name and profile photo in ads that endorse a product the user 'liked', without clear consent (Facebook Sponsored Stories, which led to a class-action settlement).
A company puts a customer testimonial or photo into marketing without permission.
A deepfake video or AI voice clone uses a real person's face or voice to promote a product.
Facial images are scraped to train commercial recognition systems.
A celebrity's likeness is used in an app or game without a licence.
How to Tell These Harms Apart from Similar Ones
Disclosure: revealing true information that harms reputation. It is about actually releasing information, not threatening to release it.
Exposure: revealing physical or emotional attributes such as nudity, grief or bodily functions. It concerns embarrassment, not leverage.
Breach of confidentiality: breaking a trusted relationship, such as a doctor sharing patient data.
Distortion: spreading false or misleading information about a person.
Blackmail: using the threat of disclosure for leverage.
Appropriation: using a person's identity for someone else's benefit.
Secondary use (a processing harm): using data for a purpose other than the one for which it was collected. It may overlap with appropriation, but appropriation specifically involves identity or likeness.
How the Harms Occur in Systems (Technologist View) Blackmail risk grows when:
sensitive data is over-collected or kept too long;
access controls are weak and logging is poor, which enables insiders;
data is stored unencrypted, so breaches yield readable information;
sensitive data sets are linked to real identities, making the threat credible.
Appropriation risk grows when:
user-generated content, photos, names or voice recordings are reused in ads or AI training without consent;
terms of service bury broad licence grants;
biometric templates or images are shared with third parties;
there are no provenance or authenticity controls against synthetic media.
Controls and Mitigations Against blackmail:
Data minimization and retention limits: data you do not hold cannot be used for leverage.
Encryption at rest and in transit.
Tokenization and pseudonymization of sensitive data.
Role-based access and least privilege, plus separation of duties.
Audit logging and monitoring to detect insiders, including data loss prevention (DLP) tools.
De-identification so that stolen data cannot be linked back to individuals.
Incident response and breach notification plans, including policies on paying ransoms.
Backups and segmentation to reduce the impact of ransomware.
Against appropriation:
Explicit, granular, opt-in consent before using a name, likeness or voice. Consent should be easy to withdraw.
Purpose limitation and clear notice about how identity data will be used.
Privacy-protective default settings, for example social ads turned off by default.
Contractual controls with partners and vendors that prohibit reuse of identity data.
Restrictions on scraping and governance of AI training data.
Biometric safeguards, such as written consent where BIPA applies.
Content provenance and authenticity tools, such as watermarking and C2PA, to fight deepfakes.
Privacy impact assessments for new features that display user identities.
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Blackmail and Appropriation
Look for the trigger words.
For blackmail: 'threatens', 'unless', 'demands', 'ransom', 'extort', 'leverage'.
Threat versus act. If the information is threatened but not yet released, the answer is blackmail. If it was actually published and is true, the answer is disclosure. If it is false, the answer is distortion.
Identity versus information. If the scenario is about someone's persona being exploited, even using public information, choose appropriation rather than disclosure or secondary use.
Remember the category. Both harms belong to Information Dissemination. A question may ask which group a harm belongs to.
Match the control to the harm.
For blackmail, choose minimization, encryption, access control and monitoring.
For appropriation, choose consent, purpose limitation, default settings and notice.
Distractors often offer a generic control that fits poorly.
Pick the most specific answer. If both 'secondary use' and 'appropriation' look plausible, choose appropriation when a name, image or likeness is the subject of the use.
Connect to the legal background. Appropriation corresponds to Prosser's tort of 'appropriation of name or likeness' and to right-of-publicity laws. Recognizing this helps with questions that blend law and technology.
Think like a designer. CIPT answers favour proactive Privacy by Design measures, embedded early, over after-the-fact fixes.
Watch for modern framing. Questions may present ransomware, AI voice cloning or generative AI images. Map them back to the classic harms.
Eliminate systematically. Ask yourself:
Is there coercion? If so, it is blackmail.
Is someone's identity being used? If so, it is appropriation.
Is information being revealed? If so, it is disclosure or exposure.
Is the information false? If so, it is distortion.
Was a trusted relationship broken? If so, it is breach of confidentiality.
Quick Practice Scenarios
A fitness app uses members' profile photos in paid social media ads saying 'Jane loves our app!' without asking them. Answer: Appropriation. Mitigate with opt-in consent and purpose limitation.
Hackers email a clinic's patients saying their diagnoses will be posted online unless each pays in cryptocurrency. Answer: Blackmail. Mitigate with encryption, minimization, access controls and incident response.
A former partner posts true but private medical details on a forum. Answer: Disclosure, not blackmail, because no demand or threat is involved.
Key Takeaway Blackmail means leverage through the threat of disclosure. Appropriation means exploiting a person's identity for someone else's benefit. Both are Solove dissemination harms. On the CIPT exam, identify the harm from its distinguishing feature (a threat or an identity), then choose the technical or design control that most directly reduces that harm.
