Internet has been part of our lives for quite a long time already, but our laws have not fully adapted yet to it. The last legislation related to electronic identification is the Directive on a Community framework for electronic signatures, from 1999. Technology has had 13 years to evolve and has left this directive out of date. Just as an example, according to Eurostat, the percentage of European households with access to internet raised from a 15% in 2004 to a 72% in the present. This means that almost 5 times more people is online now, and it is obvious that the increase would be even bigger if we had data from 1999, the year of the directive. To face this situation, the European Commission has decided to launch a new regulation to update the ways in which we can identify ourselves online.

The important point now is how this is going to happen, how to determine the needed information to identify ourselves in each situation, and how to protect the privacy of the rest of our data. The information needed for purchasing online should be the same as the one when we buy in the physical world (plus a shipping address to receive the items in some cases), nowadays this is not happening and the regulation should try to tackle this issue. To give a concrete example, if I want to top my telephone up in a supermarket or a shop I just need to pay for it, but if I want to do it online I need to provide information about my name and surname, age, gender, home address and nationality. Is the fact that I am a young Spanish man who lives in a middle-class neighbourhood of Brussels relevant for this? Why should somebody link my telephone number to my home address? And also, for what purpose does the company plan to use that information?

Maybe in 1999 this was not a relevant issue due to the low amount of people who used to buy on the net, but now that 34% of EU population buy goods online regularly many more people are affected by this (and the amount of information, as well as the value of those databases is much higher too).

There have been several research projects, such as FIDIS and ABC4Trust funded by the European Union to investigate about this topic. We will soon speak more about them and update you about this regulation!