Regulations in Poland relating to entities providing services electronically (meaning practically all entities running Internet websites) have been amended. These changes derive from the new provisions of the EU law, in particular Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector.

The implementation of the EU regulations has been carried out by amending Poland’s Telecommunication Law with respect to installing cookie files on a computer. In Internet parlance, a “cookie” is a small file that records which sites a user has visited, and may contain some information about that site. They are widely used across the Internet, and are often required for a website to function correctly. Until now, the Polish law allowed websites to place cookies on an Internet user’s computer or other device without the user’s consent. The provisions relating to websites use of cookies were based on the “opt-out” model, which meant that the user could object to storing a cookie, yet the user’s prior and actively expressed consent was unnecessary.