11. European Laws’ Effectiveness in Protecting Personal Data

The fuel for the digital economy and business is data. Data is being harvested online on an unprecedented scale. Digital enterprises involved in this practice are thus quite active in collecting all sorts of data through pervasive techniques that track and collect huge amounts of information. This practice has drastic consequences for the privacy and security of such data. In order to ensure the security and privacy of those data, European legislators have recently enacted and adopted different legal instruments. However, a mere adoption of laws does not per se guarantee their effectiveness in achieving the intended goal. This presumption underpins the hypothesis of this research which comes down to the following: the mere adoption of legal tools does not automatically guarantee the enhancement of the privacy and security of personal data against online tracking and targeting. By putting this hypothesis to the test, this research attempts to address the question over the extent to which newly created obligations in recently adopted legal tools can effectively enhance and secure the privacy of users’ data against the tracking and targeting practices of digital enterprises. To this end, this study will firstly elaborate on the meaning and scope of the concept of privacy. Secondly, the applicability of privacy in relation to technologies that are employed for tracking and targeting in cyberspace is scrutinized. In the third place, we will take a closer look at the impact of obligations that are imposed on digital enterprises by the new legal instruments. Finally, a conclusion is drawn over the actual effectiveness of these instruments in protecting and securing the privacy of users against the technologies deployed by digital enterprises.