Do you think it is wrong to listen to someone's personal business?

How can you not "LISTEN"?? I mean sound travels the same in all directions. You just do not bother concentrating. Some people want that kinda attention so they speak loudly. Like the corporate ones, they want people to know how much they OWN and how many contacts they have.

Personal business is not of your business. But the question is: what is personal? Even if people talk loud you have a choice to listen or not. You can walk away, keep your ears shut, start humming a song or keep your mind busy with something else. I always wonder why some people hear everything that is going on and others know nothing. Even if they live in exactly the same house or street.

I think that if they are talking loudly in public whatever they are saying is not meant to be private. If it was private, they would excuse themselves and take the conversation somewhere else. If they have zero common sense and cannot tell the difference between waht should be private and what should be public, then, they will just have to learn the hard way. I do not go out of my way to overhear other people's conversations; but, I do not ignore people who are around me either.

if they are on a cell phone and speaking so loudly that I can hear, They Must Want me to know , so I listen. But I don't go around Trying to hear every little tidbit.

i think it is really wrong if not permitted to listen to private activities....

If people around us is talking really loud, it is unavoidable to hear them especially if the topic caught our attention. But listening to it is something that we can control. Instead of focusing on what they say, we can try to drone their voices out by listening to music or talking to our companion. Anyway, I don't think it's wrong to hear what they say, as long as we don't meddle in the conversation or say something about it. ;)

It can be difficult not to listen, when someone is really talking loudly about it and such. It doesn't necessarily make it right, but it certainly does make it difficult. If the person isn't speaking loudly about it, then it's different than if you can easily hear it. But I still don't think that it's right either way.

I figure that if they talk about it so loud, then it's probably not a secret. This doesn't mean that I think people should purposely listen to other people's conversations, and I definitely don't think that it should be talked about later, but some people are just hard to tune out. If I have a good book with me, then I can usually get distracted enough to not hear them.