While more and more aspects of our lives acquire a digital dimension, our offline rights and safeguards are not necessarily transposed to digital platforms. Think about it, we are entitled to our privacy by law when it comes to others knowing our mobile number, our consumer preferences and our whereabouts. But can we attest to the same safeguards online as we juggle from one web service to another?

Some of us are only too happy to trade wifi connection in a restaurant for the ‘slight’ inconvenience of ‘checking-in’ their location on social media.

As we browse we are also being tracked all the time. We experience it all the time. One moment you are browsing through products on an internet shopping site, a few minutes later you are being offered very similar stuff on social media or through a search engine.

I hear you say: what the click is wrong with that? Yes, as a user, this behavioural tracking can prove to be handy because it adapts our experience online around our preferences and interests. It ensures that the internet gives us what we need when we need it. It only gets nasty when this is done without you knowing or having subscribed to it. Or if, as a user, you are at a very weak bargaining position when choosing.

The service providers on the internet are generally covered through a myriad of small-print consent agreement. We all click the “agree” button almost all the time. It turns out that as much as 90 per cent of us never really bother to read those contracts and proceed to the required service.

In this age, when we are freely (and consciously?) imparting with such a huge amount of data, have the regulatory safeguards become irrelevant? It looks like it. This calls for a basic set of inalienable rights and safeguards that ought to apply a priori to any ‘terms and conditions’ agreement entered into between the user and the supplier online.

The internet could become an environment where some regularly decide what reaches us and what does not

The dilemmas outlined above are already on the agenda of the European Parliament. Existing data protection laws were passed before the internet boom and are, hence, in need of a radical shake up. MEPs have been calling for practical and realistic measures to safeguard our privacy and data protection rights vis-à-vis the giants of Silicone Valley and beyond while ensuring that these rights remain proportionate to – and do not dampen – the internet’s huge potential as a purveyor of innovation and economic growth.

The way in which communication networks are managed is equally of interest to us as users. They can be used and abused by operators to favour certain data or service over others at the risk of creating a competitive imbalance.

The internet, which we expect to be a neutral platform where the best ideas flourish, could become an environment where some regularly decide what reaches us and what does not. This could be based exclusively on the basis of what is more profitable to operators.

Here again, the European Parliament is engaged in a drive to make net neutrality a binding reality through a number of reforms including through a renewed telecoms package and the forthcoming copyright reform.

The European Parliament will be responding with legislative action to a constantly changing online environment.

Yet, regulation is only part of what is needed to make the best of the internet while making sure it is not taken over by commercial interests.

Much more can be done through awareness raising and civic engagement.

This is the theme of a conference being organised tomorrow by the European Parliament Office in collaboration with the Strickland Foundation and the Malta Communications Authority. Register by sending an e-mail to info@digitalawarenessmalta.com. There will also be a talk entitled ‘Does social media control our lives?’ tonight at Villa Bologna. Register to the event by sending an e-mail to pportelli@gmail.com. Entrance is free.

Peter Agius is head of the European Parliament Office in Malta.