The European Commission is hatching out a legal plan which will allow every citizen to be forgotten. EU data protection rules are to be updated to take into account the popularity of digital networking sites where people share photographs or personal details that can haunt them when they become distributed online.

Viviane Reding, Europe's rights commissioner, said the world of data protection had been transformed by popular new technologies in the last 15 years. She said that Internet users must have effective control of what they put online and be able to correct, withdraw or delete it at will. If you want to permanently delete your profile on a social networking site it should be easy and the right to be forgotten is essential in today's digital world.

The commission will require new legislation clarifying and strengthening the rules on consent to allow web users to stop anyone from gathering information about them without having to make complicated adjustments to their internet browsers.