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Articles in this category:  15.04.2008 / Privacy and data protection in the Internet era
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Web companies, search engines but also publishers collect data online to provide better and usually free services to their users. This personal and behavioral information helps them to adapt their services but also to target advertising. Those databases of information are crucial to help publishers monetize their content over the Internet.
Unfortunately, the fastly growing number of data that is collected is raising concerns in Brussels and is one of the hot debates in the European sphere as it could lead to precise identification of the user and a breach in privacy for Internet users.
Concretly, debates are taking place in the European Parliament where the so-called ePrivacy directive which covers cookies, retention of data and the opt-in regime for direct marketing is under review in the wider context of the telecom package. The discussions were also heightened by the Google/Doubleclick merger and based on fears more than on a real understanding of the issue.
This is why besides the Parliament reflections, different services of the European Commission responsible for consumer protection and civil liberties are studying the practices and how the legislation in place is respected to evaluate if consumer awareness campaigns, industry codes of conduct or further legislation is needed to ensure proper protection of citizens.
It is time now for publishers to reflect and position themselves in this debate that could have a serious impact on how to operate online. click to close |
