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August 2016 - Public Consultation

EU Commission holds public consultation on ePrivacy: The European Commission has recently published the preliminary findings of their public consultation on the review of the ePrivacy Directive.

The ePrivacy legislation applies to electronic communications providers and needs to be altered to suit the new general data protection guidelines. This will further allow people to be more in control of their personal data.

According to the European citizens and civil society organisations who responded to the public consultation, 83 per cent said that there was a clear added value in introducing dedicated privacy legislation for the electronic communications industry to enforce confidentiality within electronic comms.

As well as this, 76 per cent of the European citizens and civil society organisations in the survey feel that the rules should be broadened to cover the ‘over the top’ (OTT) service providers when they offer communications services such as instant messaging and VoIP.

Of the European citizens and civil society organisations, 76 per cent said that they believe the ePrivacy Directive has either not achieved, or only partially achieved, its aims of ensuring full protection of confidentiality and privacy of communication. The reason for this was attributed to the scope being too limited, it been too low on enforcement and compliance and it leading to differences within EU Member States.

Of the respondents, industry and public authorities were discovered to be more positive that the ePrivacy Directive has successfully met its aims and objectives, whereas 42 per cent of industry participants were found to be against the scope of rules being widened to cover the OTT service providers when they offer instant messaging and VoIP.

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