Metadata Retention in France

The French Government on February 2015 decided to impose metadata retention policy on its citizens. The respective authority, under this data retention policy requires the internet service providers to monitor and any suspicious online behavior by any of its users. Moreover, the ISPs are also required to handover cellular data of its users. The policy also provides the French government with the privilege to dig deep into any respective individual’s social media, emails and other online communications services.

Mass surveillance and traffic analysis has been quoted by the government as the main objective for instilling this policy and as expected several organizations and political figures have raised their voice against such a drastic step taken by the government. While Backlash is revving up with time, the government authorities haven’t shown the slightest interest in heeding to it.

Under this policy, the French government will have access to the following:

• Communication source
• Communication destination
• Communication date, time, and duration
• Communication type and device
• Mobile device location

Therefore, as a citizen of France, the details like the type of websites that you usually visit, the time you spend on each of these websites and the type of mails you send etc will be stored by your ISP for a period of one year. The ISP has the right to store these details for a period of one year and present it to the law enforcement even if you have discontinued their service within this time period. What’s more astounding is that the ISPs are entitled to offer sensitive information like username, passwords, financial transaction details etc.

As more and more parties are joining the cause against metadata retention in France, we can expect the governments reaction soon enough, but can’t yet confirm when. One of the possible solutions to stay away from metadata retention and related fuss till then is to use a Virtual Private Network or VPN service. VPNSecure's services can be the ideal solution to alleviate the concern of metadata retention.