Poland’s Inspector General for the protection of personal data has said that data security on the internet should be strengthened in Poland, in the wake of growing concern about the issue.

Wojciech Wiewiorkowski told Polish Radio that data security rules date back to the mid 1990’s, when the web was not such a part of everyday life and there were no social network services such as Facebook.

Wiewiorkowski underlined that using social network services demands a careful study of current regulations. He warned users when putting up information on these sites that data on the web does not automatically disappear when deleted – it could have been copied and put up anywhere else already, he said.

Last year the number of internet users in Poland was some 16,50 million, 14 percent more that in 2008. The time spent on the web was over 833 billion hours. (ab)