Set by the law · ePrivacy Directive Art. 2(b)

Metadata

In plain English

Data about a communication rather than its content: source, destination, date, time, duration, type, equipment and location. The Court of Justice found that, taken together, they can reveal very precise details of private life.

The official text

‘traffic data’ means any data processed for the purpose of the conveyance of a communication on an electronic communications network or for the billing thereof

Directive 2002/58/EC (ePrivacy Directive), Article 2(b)EUR-Lex

data necessary to trace and identify the source of a communication and its destination, to identify the date, time, duration and type of a communication, to identify users’ communication equipment, and to identify the location of mobile communication equipment

Court of Justice of the EU, judgment of 8 April 2014, Digital Rights Ireland and Others, C-293/12, paragraph 26EUR-Lex

Those data, taken as a whole, may allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained

Court of Justice of the EU, judgment of 8 April 2014, Digital Rights Ireland and Others, C-293/12, paragraph 27EUR-Lex

Related

The official text is quoted word for word from the English version of the source named under it; only the version published in the Official Journal of the EU is legally binding. The plain-English line is Fino’s own summary, not legal advice.