The presentation discusses the development of the concept of privacy, the applicable rules and today’s practice. Looking back for 25 years makes it clear how the privacy debate has changed. The privacy challenges of the moment are completely different from those of 1993. Technology has transformed our services, our work and our lives in ways we could not have imagined in 1993. From local to the cloud. From limited data sets to (meta)data collected by services and social media we use every day. From a relative innocent phenomenon as Directory Services that we discussed at JENC (TNC predecessor) in Trondheim in 1993 to big data and advanced data analysis today.