Changes to the laws surrounding data security and privacy are to be put before the European Parliament. One of the aims is to give web users the right to have information about them held online by companies deleted.

If the package of legislation announced by the European Commission is approved by  the EU member states and ratified by the parliament, there could be significant changes to the way that companies such as Facebook and Google can hold data about their customers. The laws would give web users the “right to be forgotten”, in that companies would be legally obligated to delete information stored about a person if requested.

Another measure to be included in the proposed legislation would mean that organisations will have to tell customers if their information have been obtained by hackers, and in most cases this will have to be done within 24 hours. This requirement was sought after events last year when Sony took six days to notify users of its Playstation Network that the databases had been breached by hackers and personal information of millions of customers had been stolen.

Before any of these rules come into effect they will have to be approved by the European Union’s member states and ratified by the European Parliament.