Is there a difference between curiosity and nosiness? Where is the line drawn?

I think this is a really interesting topic, one I've thought about often as I prefer to live in a village rather than a town setting, so it's one that comes up every so often regardless of where in the world I live..

For me the line is drawn somewhere between being asked about myself out of simple interest, and being asked or watched for the purpose of being gossiped about and used as a talking point for others who don't have anything better to do with themselves for whatever reason..

For example in getting to know another person and what makes them tick, we're going to ask questions about each other, for personal benefit maybe just to make polite conversation or maybe in terms of deciding whether to be friends and building or maintaining a rapport / friendship with someone.

The line between curiosity and nosiness, for me, is crossed when someone uses that info to amuse themselves when talking to other people, gossiping I guess, but basically wanting to know about you for no reason other than to have something to discuss when they next meet up with someone else.

I think though that it can be a very subjective issue because some of the questions people ask us can feel a lot more intrusive than others..

For example we are from UK originally and there are certain questions that you cimply don't ask new aquaintances there such as "how much did you pay for your house / car etc?" - "how much do you earn?" etc.

When we moved to Cyprus though, those are common questions to be asked, there aren't the same taboos about those topics when you first meet someone and it felt really weird (& a bit nosy until we got used to it..)

I think I will come back to this one - not sure if I expressed myself too well there, but thanks for asking the question 2honest. I'm interested to know what other people have answered too...