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Regulations on privacy and electronic communications

While the Data Protection Directive 95 

, 46 and Data Protection Act afford a reasonable 

level of protection for consumers, they were quickly superseded by advances in technology 

and the rapid growth in spam. As a result, in 2002 the European Union passed the ‘2002 

, 

58/EC Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications’ to complement previous data 

protection law (see Box 4.3). This Act applies specifically to electronic communications such 

as email and the monitoring of websites using technologies such as cookies.