Brussels, 31/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - Although the search engines and online social networks are not doing everything to self-regulate their practices in respect of consumer rights, the European Commission will not hesitate to legislate to guarantee respect for these rights in the digital world. This was the unambiguous warning made by Meglena Kuneva, the commissioner for consumer protection, on 31 March in Brussels to all internet operators targeting and profiling consumer behaviour for commercial purposes. Ms Kuneva gave her warning at the round table on “Online Data Collection, Targeting and Profiling”. The commissioner declared that given the explosion in the volume of personal data collected on the internet, “I feel there is a much needed discussion on the new generation of practices and business models built on the ability to profile consumers and then use their profile to target them for commercial purposes. The current work on privacy has concentrated on eliminating personally identifiable information such as name or IP addresses from the public domain. Consumer policy needs to go beyond that and address the fact that users have a profile and can be commercially targeted based on that profile, even if no one knows their actual name”. The commissioner explained that obtaining balance between the interests of industry and consumers required two things: respect for user rights to control public exposure of their data, and the obligation of protecting them against abusive or dangerous practices. Ms Kuneva affirmed that “Consumer rights must adapt to technology, not be crushed by it. The current situation with regard to privacy, profiling and targeting is not satisfactory”. She asserted that they did not need to reinvent the wheel to tackle the question and said that the principles governing consumer policy were already there: transparency, clear information, freedom of choice, fair communications competition and clarity of contractual terminology. She explained that they needed to debate how to apply these principles that had been tested in the digital world. The Commission is prepared to give industry time to agree on the principles and organise itself but if an appropriate solution was not forthcoming, the Commission would carry out its role of legislator. (A.N./transl.rh)