Contextual integrity is a theory of privacy developed by Helen Nissenbaum and presented in her book "Privacy In Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life".

Contextual Integrity comprises four essential descriptive claims: (1) Privacy is provided by appropriate flows of information. (2) Appropriate information flows are those that conform with contextual information norms. (3) Contextual informational norms refer to five independent parameters: data subject, sender, recipient, information type, and transmission principle. (4) Conceptions of privacy are based on ethical concerns that evolve over time.

Contextual Integrity can be seen as a reaction to theories that define privacy as control over information about oneself, as secrecy, or as regulation of personal information that is private, or sensitive.

This places contextual integrity at odds with privacy regulation based on Fair Information Practice Principles; it also does not line up with the 1990s Cypherpunk view that newly discovered cryptographic techniques would assure privacy in the digital age because preserving privacy is not a matter of stopping any data collection, or blocking all flows of information, minimizing data flow, or by stopping information leakage.