On-line Privacy in Europe - New Regulation for Cookies

The Internet has increasingly become part of our everyday lives. However, for all the many benefits that this brings, there remain legitimate concerns that the Internet poses an inherent threat to the privacy of users. The technical characteristics of the Internet provide a host of opportunities for monitoring users' activities, potentially enabling an invisible profile to be drawn up of each Internet user. In Europe, the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive provides a framework for protection of information privacy. This paper will evaluate the effectiveness of the Directive in protecting on-line privacy, and in particular consider the likely impact of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive adopted by the Commission on the 12th July 2002. For the first time, the new Directive makes specific provision for invisible data collection tools such as cookies. This paper will argue that the new Directive adds little to the protection afforded by the Data Protection Directive.