European Voice explores the balance between online advertisers' ability to track consumers and Internet users' privacy concerns with regard to personal data, which one European commissioner has described as the "currency of the digital world." The European Commission has suggested that building consumer confidence about data use will only help the online industry. The report examines the potential for new laws and recent efforts by Internet companies to prove that self-regulation can work. As the U.S. considers new regulations--and the EU plans to update its 26-year-old data protection directive--one consumer advocate notes, "Legislation needs to be kept flexible and general because we don't know where we will be, even in six months' time."
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