YOUNG, J.
In this case, we must decide if the home addresses and telephone numbers of University of Michigan employees sought through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request are exempt from disclosure under FOIA’s privacy exemption.1 We hold that employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers meet both prongs of FOIA’s privacy exemption because that information is “of a personal nature” and its disclosure would constitute a “clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.” In reaching this conclusion, we reexamine the definition of “information of a personal nature” set forth by this Court in Bradley v Saranac Community Schools Bd of Ed,2 and conclude that it unnecessarily limited the intended scope of that phrase. We cure this deficiency and revise that definition to encompass information of an embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential nature. We conclude that employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers are information of an embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential nature. Disclosure of this information would constitute a “clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy” in this case primarily because the core purposes of FOIA would not be advanced by its disclosure to plaintiff. With both prongs of the privacy exemption satisfied, we hold that the Uni[661] versity of Michigan employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers are exempt from disclosure.
Accordingly, the decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the circuit court’s grant of summary disposition in favor of defendants is reinstated.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Plaintiff Michigan Federation of Teachers submitted a FOIA request to defendant University of Michigan’s chief FOIA officer, seeking numerous items of information that defendant possessed regarding every University of Michigan employee. The information sought included first and last names, job title, compensation rate, and work address and telephone number. Two additional items of information sought by plaintiff, which are the subject of this appeal, are the employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers.
Defendant timely responded to the FOIA request and provided nearly all the information plaintiff sought. With respect to the home addresses and telephone numbers, defendant released the information of 20,812 employees who had given defendant their permission to publish their home addresses and telephone numbers in the University of Michigan’s faculty and staff directory. Defendant did not turn over the home addresses and telephone numbers of the remaining 16,406 employees who had withheld permission to publish that information in the directory. Thus, defendant denied the FOIA request in part, relying on the privacy exemption and stating that the information’s release would constitute an unwarranted invasion of these employees’ privacy.
Plaintiff filed suit in the Washtenaw Circuit Court, seeking to compel the release of the remaining home addresses and telephone numbers. The parties filed cross-motions for summary disposition. Defendant at[662] tached to its motion six affidavits from employees who did not want their home addresses and telephone numbers released to the public. Some of the affiants attested that the release of this information would threaten their own or their family’s safety.
The circuit court granted defendant’s motion for summary disposition. It ruled that the employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers were information of a personal nature and that “one would be hard pressed to argue that disclosure ‘contributes significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government.’ ”
The Court of Appeals reversed the circuit court in an unpublished opinion per curiam.3 Relying on Bradley, the panel held that home addresses and telephone numbers were not “information of a personal nature” because they did not reveal intimate or embarrassing details of an individual’s private life, even when considered against the “customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community.” It also held that no caselaw supported the proposition that public employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers were items of personal information,4 and that in those reported cases where home addresses were held to be exempt from disclosure under the privacy exemption, the plaintiffs had sought disclosure of addresses to access other information that was personal.5
[663] The panel, however, recognized that certain employees might have legitimate reasons to avoid disclosure of their personal information. Relying on Tobin v Civil Service Comm, it ruled that on remand defendant “may determine whether any of its employees not included in the directory have demonstrated ‘truly exceptional circumstances’ to prevent disclosure of names, addresses, and telephone numbers.”
Judge Wilder concurred with the majority’s decision under Bradley, but raised two points. First, he suggested that Bradley’s reading of the statutory language was inconsistent with its plain meaning and was worthy of reexamination. Second, he questioned whether the advent of the national do-not-call registry6 and the rising nationwide problem of identity theft had significantly altered the “customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community” concerning the disclosure of personal identifying information since the Bradley Court decided the issue in 1997.
Defendant filed an application seeking leave to appeal, which this Court granted.7
[664] STANDARD OF REVIEW
This Court reviews de novo the trial court’s decision to grant a motion for summary disposition.8 This Court reviews de novo as a question of law issues of statutory interpretation.9 And as we stated in an earlier FOIA case,
[b]ecause our judicial role precludes imposing different policy choices than those selected by the Legislature, our obligation is, by examining the statutory language, to discern the legislative intent that may reasonably be inferred from the words expressed in the statute. If the language of a statute is clear and unambiguous, the plain meaning of the statute reflects the legislative intent and judicial construction is not permitted. We must give the words of a statute their plain and ordinary meaning.[10]
ANALYSIS
1. BACKGROUND TO FOIA AND THE PRIVACY EXEMPTION
Consistent with the legislatively stated public policy supporting the act,11 the Michigan FOIA requires dis[665] closure of the “public record[s]”12 of a “public body”13 to persons who request to inspect, copy, or receive copies of those requested public records.14 However, § 13 of FOIA15 sets forth a series of exemptions granting the public body the discretion to withhold a public record from disclosure if it falls within one of the exemptions.16 In the event a FOIA request is denied and the requesting party commences a circuit court action to compel disclosure of a public record, the public body bears the burden of sustaining its decision to withhold the requested record from disclosure.17
The FOIA exemption at issue in this case is the privacy exemption, MCL 15.243(l)(a), which states:
(1) A public body may exempt from disclosure as a public record under this act any of the following:
(a) Information of a personal nature if public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.
This Court has attempted to construe this provision on many occasions since the enactment of the Michigan FOIA in 1976 and struggled for nearly as many years to reach a consensus regarding its proper interpretation. Kestenbaum v Michigan State Univ,18 marked the first occasion that this Court interpreted the privacy exemp[666] tion. The plaintiff, for purposes of political mailings, requested a computer tape containing the names and addresses of the university’s students. He sued when Michigan State denied the request. An equally divided Court affirmed the Court of Appeals decision that the tape was exempt.19
Chief Justice Fitzgerald’s opinion held that the release of the computer tape would violate the privacy exemption. Focusing on the statutory requirement that “the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy,” Chief Justice FITZGERALD opined that
there has remained throughout this country’s legal history one recognized situs of individual control — the dwelling place. Without exception, this bastion of privacy has been afforded greater protection against outside assaults than has any other location.[20]
He reasoned that disclosure of the magnetic tape would constitute an invasion of privacy because
any intrusion into the home, no matter the purpose or the extent, is definitionally an invasion of privacy. A fortiori, the release of names and addresses constitutes an invasion of privacy, since it serves as a conduit into the sanctuary of the home.[21]
Further, where the student information would be distributed in electronic rather than print form, Chief Justice FITZGERALD argued presciently that this invasion was “clearly unwarranted” because “the pervasiveness [667] of computer technology has resulted in an ever-increasing erosion of personal privacy.”22
Justice Ryan’s opinion would have ordered the release of the computer tape. Examining the privacy exemption, Justice RYAN argued for a two-part inquiry to analyze MCL 15.243(l)(a). First, the requested information must be “of a personal nature.” Second, if the information is of a personal nature, its disclosure must constitute a “clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.” Justice RYAN argued that the information sought was not “of a personal nature” because he was “satisfied that names, addresses, telephone numbers, and other standard identifying information simply are not embarrassing information ‘of a personal nature’ for the overwhelming majority of students at Michigan State University.”23 He took the view that
[m]ost citizens voluntarily divulge their names and addresses on such a widespread basis that any alleged privacy interest in the information is either absent or waived. People applying for employment reveal their names and addresses on their resumes; cashing a check or using a credit card requires the release of one’s address; and ordering magazines or otherwise communicating through the mail reveals one’s address. Being a licensed driver, a car owmer, a property owner or taxpayer, an officer of a corporation, an applicant for a marriage license, or a registered voter requires revelation, at a minimum, of one’s name and address, information which is often routinely made available to the public. While some people might prefer that their names and addresses not be known to certain individuals such as advertisers, bill collectors, or [668] freeloading relatives, that preference is simply not based on the fact that one’s address is a “personal”, intimate, or embarrassing piece of information. We leave for another day the question whether, in certain unusual circumstances, ordinarily impersonal information might take on an intensely personal character.[24]
Justice RYAN concluded by arguing that even if the information was “of a personal nature,” its disclosure was not a “clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy” because the students had ways to avoid unwanted mailings and because “the public benefits of voter registration and political campaigning contemplated in this case clearly outweigh any minimal invasion of privacy.”25
After Kestenbaum, this Court decided several cases without being able to provide a majority rule for the proper construction of the privacy exemption. In Tobin v Civil Service Comm,26 a “reverse” FOIA case,27 this Court unanimously held that FOIA “authorizes, but does not require, nondisclosure of public records falling within a FOIA exemption.”28 The plaintiffs challenged the defendants’ decision to release the names and addresses of all classified civil service employees. Even though the parties agreed that the privacy exemption was applicable, this Court declined to consider whether the names and addresses were exempt under FOIA because it rejected the plaintiffs threshold argument that the Michigan FOIA affirmatively prohibited their disclosure. In Int’l Union, United Plant Guard Workers [669] of America v Dep’t of State Police,29 another evenly divided Court affirmed the Court of Appeals decision ordering the release of reports containing the names and addresses of guards employed by certain security guard agencies.30 Two years later, this Court issued another fractured decision in State Employees Ass’n v Dep’t of Mgt & Budget.31 Five members of this Court affirmed the Court of Appeals, which had ordered disclosure of the home addresses of certain state civil service bargaining units; one member dissented, and another did not participate.32
In Swickard v Wayne Co Med Examiner,33 this Court finally reached a majority result and rationale applying the privacy exemption.34 In Swickard, the plaintiff sought the autopsy report and toxicology test results of a judge who was found shot to death in his mother’s home. Rejecting the defendant’s argument that the privacy exemption protected their disclosure, Justice RlLEY’s majority opinion concluded, first, that the records were not “information of a personal nature.” To [670] define “personal,” the majority consulted a dictionary and discovered that it meant “[o]f or pertaining to a particular person; private; one’s own .... Concerning a particular individual and his intimate affairs, interests, or activities; intimate . . . .”35 The majority also approvingly noted that Justice RYAN, in his Kestenbaum opinion, had defined that statutory phrase as something “personal, intimate, or embarrassing.” The majority further reasoned that it would look to the common law and constitutional law to determine if disclosure would violate a privacy right protected under FOIA.36 It held that the scope of the privacy exemption would be gauged by reference to “the customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community ... .”37 After concluding that the deceased judge and his family had no common-law or constitutional right to privacy with respect to the records after his death, the majority concluded that the records were not “information of a personal nature” and thus their disclosure was not an invasion of privacy.
In Booth Newspapers, Inc v Univ of Mich Bd of Regents,38 the plaintiff newspapers sought travel records created in conjunction with the university’s search for a new president. The university argued that the records were exempt under the privacy exemption. This Court held that this information was not “of a personal nature” because there were no customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community that warranted [671] a finding that the travel expense records of a public body constituted information of a personal nature.39
In Bradley, the central case under consideration in the present appeal, this Court decided whether the personnel records of public school teachers and administrators were exempt from disclosure under the privacy exemption. The Bradley Court affirmed that this exemption contains two elements: first, that the information sought is “of a personal nature” and, second, that the disclosure of the information would be a “clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy.” With respect to the first element, the majority observed:
In the past, we have used two slightly different formulations to describe “personal nature.” The first defines “personal” as “[o]f or pertaining to a particular person; private; one’s own .... Concerning a particular individual and his intimate affairs, interests, or activities, intimate .... ” We have also defined this threshold inquiry in terms of whether the requested information was “personal, intimate, or embarrassing.” Combining the salient elements of each description into a more succinct test, we conclude that information is of a personal nature if it reveals intimate or embarrassing details of an individual’s private life. We evaluate this standard in terms of “the ‘customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community’ ____”[40]
Using this new definition, the majority concluded that the personnel records sought in Bradley were not “of a personal nature” because they did not contain any “embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential” matters.41
[672] Bradley has since served as the template for the first prong of the privacy exemption. This Court decided two cases involving this exemption after Bradley. Mager v Dep’t of State Police42 and Herald Co v Bay City.43 In Mager, the plaintiff made a FOIA request for the names and addresses of persons who owned registered handguns. The State Police denied the FOIA request pursuant to the privacy exemption. Relying on the Bradley definition that “ ‘information is of a personal nature if it reveals intimate or embarrassing details of an individual’s private life,’ ”44 this Court held in a unanimous per curiam decision that the records fell within this first prong because gun ownership was information of a personal nature as an intimate or perhaps embarrassing detail of one’s personal life.45
The Mager Court then moved to the second prong of the test — whether “disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy” — and devised what has since been labeled the “core purpose test.” Mager took guidance from the United States Supreme Court’s decision in United States Dep’t of Defense v Fed Labor Relations Auth,46 in which the Court employed a balancing test [673] under the federal FOIA’s privacy exemption.47 Under that test, “ ‘a court must balance the public interest in disclosure against the interest Congress intended the exemption to protect,’ ” and the “ ‘only relevant public interest in disclosure to be weighed in this balance is the extent to which disclosure would serve the core purpose of the FOIA, which is contributing significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government.’ ”48 This Court, like the Court in Dep’t of Defense, also quoted approvingly the statement that “ ‘disclosure of information about private citizens that is accumulated in various governmental files but that reveals little or nothing about an agency’s own conduct’ ” would not advance the core purpose of FOIA.49 In addition, this Court noted that, like the United States Supreme Court, it was “ ‘reluctant to disparage the privacy of the home, which is accorded special consideration in our Constitution, laws, and traditions.’ ”50 Applying these principles, the Mager Court concluded that, under any reasonable balancing, disclosure of the gun-ownership information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy because it was entirely unrelated to any inquiry regarding the inner working of government or how well the Department of State Police was fulfilling its statutory functions.
In Herald Co, this Court unanimously held that the defendant, Bay City, violated FOIA when it refused to disclose public records concerning the final candidates [674] for the position of Bay City fire chief, in particular the candidates’ names, current job titles, cities of residence, and ages. Citing the Bradley definition, this Court stated the test for “information of a personal nature” that “ ‘information is of a personal nature if it reveals intimate or embarrassing details of an individual’s private life. We evaluate this standard in terms of “the ‘customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community’. ... ” ’ ”51 This Court concluded that “the fact of application for a public job, or the typical background information one may disclose with such an application, is simply not ‘personal’ within the contemplation of this exemption.”52 Moreover, this Court held that the community’s mores, customs, and views would not support that this information was of a personal nature.
Although the records failed to satisfy the first prong of the privacy exemption, this Court went on to discuss why the records would also fail the second prong. Citing the Mager core-purpose test, this Court noted that disclosure of the information concerning the final candidates for fire chief would serve the policy underlying FOIA because it would facilitate the public’s access to information regarding the affairs of their city government. Thus, the invasion of privacy, assuming there was one, was not “clearly unwarranted.”53
[675] Thus, the privacy exemption, as currently interpreted, has two prongs that the information sought to be withheld from disclosure must satisfy. First, the information must be “of a personal nature.” Second, it must be the case that the public disclosure of that information “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.” We analyze whether the home addresses and telephone numbers in this case satisfy both prongs, particularly the tests for both that we articulated in Bradley and Mager.
2. “INFORMATION OF A PERSONAL NATURE”
In answering the first question whether the home addresses and telephone numbers of university employees are “information of a personal nature,” we also reconsider whether Bradley's exposition of that phrase fully captures its intended meaning. The concurring judge on the Court of Appeals suggested, and defendant argues, that the Bradley articulation is too narrow.54
We hold that the Bradley formulation, as far as it goes, is a correct description of what information is “of a personal nature.” Thus, we continue to hold that “intimate” or “embarrassing” details of an individual are “of a personal nature.” However, a case such as this leads us to conclude that “intimate” and “embarrassing” do not exhaust the intended scope of that statutory phrase. Indeed, the Bradley Court itself noted, whether [676] inadvertently or not, that “information of a personal nature” includes more than “intimate” or “embarrassing” details of a person’s life. After articulating its “succinct test,” the Bradley Court expanded it by concluding that “none of the documents [sought in that case] contain information of an embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential nature.”55 After careful consideration, we conclude that the observation from Bradley that intimate, embarrassing, private, or confidential information is “of a personal nature” more accurately and fully describes the intended scope of the statutory text as assessed in the first prong of the privacy exemption. Indeed, the words “personal” and “private” are largely synonymous.56 Thus, private or confidential information relating to a person, in addition to embarrassing or intimate details, is “information of a personal nature.”57
With the test thus clarified, the next question is whether employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers reveal embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential details about those individuals. We hold that they do. Where a person lives and how that person may be contacted fits squarely within the plain meaning of this definition because that information offers private and even confidential details about that person’s life. As Chief Justice FITZGERALD noted in Kestenbaum, [677] “the release of names and addresses constitutes an invasion of privacy, since it serves as a conduit into the sanctuary of the home.”58
The potential abuses of an individual’s identifying information, including his home address and telephone number, are legion. For example, some of the affiants in this case attested that they do not want their information added to mass mailings, perhaps seeking to avoid the inevitable harassing telephone calls of telemarketers or deluge of junk mail. On a more serious level, other affiants stated that their physical safety or the safety of their families would be jeopardized if their identifying information fell into the wrong hands, such as those of an ex-spouse or a disgruntled patient. These realistic concerns illustrate in practical ways why an individual’s home address and telephone number are “information of a personal nature.”59
[678] And, although the federal FOIA privacy exemption [679] contains language different from Michigan’s FOIA privacy exemption, the United State Supreme Court’s treatment of that provision is useful to our analysis.60 In Dep’t of Defense, the Court unanimously rejected a union’s federal FOIA request seeking the home addresses of federal civil service employees. Addressing the employees’ interest in the nondisclosure of their home addresses, it opined:
It is trae that home addresses often are publicly available through sources such as telephone directories and voter registration lists, but “[i]n an organized society, there are few facts that are not at one time or another divulged to another.” The privacy interest protected by [the federal exemption] “encompass[es] the individual’s control of information concerning his or her person.” An individual’s interest in controlling the dissemination of information regarding personal matters does not dissolve simply because that information may be available to the public in some form.[61]
[680] The Court astutely recognized that an individual’s control over his identifying information is essential where the information regards such personal matters.
An individual’s home address and telephone number might be listed in the telephone book or available on an Internet website, but he might nevertheless understandably refuse to disclose this information, when asked, to a stranger, a co-worker, or even an acquaintance. The disclosure of information of a personal nature into the public sphere in certain instances does not automatically remove the protection of the privacy exemption and subject the information to disclosure in every other circumstance.
Finally, while it is not critical to our holding that home addresses and telephone numbers are “information of a personal nature,” the fact that in this case certain university employees actively asserted control over their identifying information by withholding their home addresses and telephone numbers from publication in the university faculty and staff directoxy undoubtedly lends credence to that conclusion.62 Particularly in this case, then, the argument that this information is not “of a personal nature” reaches its nadir.63
[681]*6813. “PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF THE INFORMATION WOULD CONSTITUTE A CLEARLY UNWARRANTED INVASION OF AN INDIVIDUAL’S PRIVACY”
Having reached this conclusion, we must move to the second prong of the privacy exemption and determine [682] whether disclosure of the information at issue would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy. We conclude, under Mager’s core-purpose test, that it would result in a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. Simply put, disclosure of employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers to plaintiff would reveal “ ‘little or nothing’ ” about a governmental agency’s conduct,64 nor would it further the stated public policy undergirding the Michigan FOIA.65 Disclosure of employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers would not shed light on whether the University of Michigan and its officials are satisfactorily fulfilling their statutory and constitutional obligations and their duties to the public. When this tenuous interest in disclosure is weighed against the invasion of privacy that would result from the disclosure of employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers, the invasion of privacy would be “clearly unwarranted.”
CONCLUSION
We hold that information is “of a personal nature” if it constitutes intimate, embarrassing, private, or confidential details about an individual. In this case, employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers are information “of a personal nature.” Moving to the second prong of the privacy exemption, we conclude that the [683] disclosure of employees’ home addresses and telephone numbers does not further a core purpose of FOIA by shedding light on whether the University of Michigan is functioning properly and consistently with its statutory and constitutional mandates.
Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and reinstate the trial court’s order granting defendant summary disposition.
Taylor, C.J., and Cavanagh, Corrigan, and Markman, JJ., concurred with YOUNG, J.