As digital interactions grow, safeguarding personal information requires that users hold both awareness of privacy threats and competence for handling privacy risks. Focusing on this emerging need, this study aims at the investigation of the main knowledge and competencies that a user should hold in order to effectively protect own online privacy. The contribution of the paper is twofold; First, it introduces a Holistic Profile for the Information Privacy Aware and Competent (IPAC) User. Second, based on conceptual analysis, this study offers a nuanced understanding of privacy awareness and privacy competencies as a single but also multifaceted construct, encompassing cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. This study offers important implications regarding privacy protection not only for users, but also for practitioners, privacy researchers, online service providers and educators.