"What has happened in the last few weeks just shows that things are not going in the right direction. The protection of personal data doesn't work properly," said Reding, a vice-president of the European Commission.
Earlier this month, Sony admitted that names, addresses, e-mails, birth dates, phone numbers and other private information might have been taken from online services running on its flagship PlayStation 3 games console.
And Apple Inc. was under the spotlight as well when it emerged that its best-selling product, the iPhone, was collecting customer data to track their locations. Apple later said it had released a software update that limits how much location information is collected on the iPhone and allows users to turn off the location feature.
For Viviane Reding, these developments demonstrate that EU data protection rules need to be strengthened.
"It is no surprise that consumers' trust in our information society has been eroded in the face of recent events. To restore this trust, I'm currently working on the reform of our EU data protection rules."
"Companies do not take the protection of personal data seriously enough."
Worse still, the EU commissioner says companies are often not fully transparent when it comes to disclosing how they use their clients' private data.
"They often do things that people are not even aware of: a GPS-producer sells information on to a third party, or millions of Apple products save local data from radio networks without asking users for permission."
The commissioner from Luxembourg revealed to EurActiv that the new, stricter rules will force companies to inform customers when their data has been unlawfully accessed.
And she says the rules will apply even to non-European firms that store the information in large data centres for so-called "cloud computing" services.
"Wherever you store information, even if it's in the cloud, if it concerns the data of citizens living in the EU, it is European law that applies," Reding said.
