Citation Edit

European Union, Article 29 Working Party on Data Protection, Opinion 2/2010 on Online Behavioural Advertising (June 22, 2010) (full-text).

Overview Edit

To facilitate and encourage compliance with existing EU privacy laws and regulations, this Opinion clarifies the legal framework applicable to those engaged in behavioural advertising.

In particular, the Opinion notes that advertising network providers are bound by Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive pursuant to which placing cookies or similar devices on users' terminal equipment or obtaining information through such devices is only allowed with the informed consent of the users.

Because behavioural advertising is based on the use of identifiers that enable the creation of very detailed user profiles which, in most cases, will be deemed personal data, Directive 95/46/EC is also applicable.