The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection estimates that public utility companies have to take more account of the lawful treatment of the personal data of the citizens, who are the users of their services. Recalling that personal data may be processed and used only for the purposes stipulated by the law, or when the data owner has given his or her explicit consent, the Commissioner has warned that the any other treatment of personal data shall be considered illegal and punishable.  In this regard the Commissioner, Rodoljub Sabic, has stated the following:

''I have recently sent a warning note, which actually applies to all public utility companies, to the address of the largest public utility company in the country ''Infostan''  from Belgrade.

The warning primarily relates to the fact that it is generally illegal to process, i.e. use the data of the service users for purposes other than those in connection with the billing in integrated services.  And such data processing is, unfortunately, often being performed for the purposes of various forms of direct marketing or for the delivery of bills, publicity materials and the like for the benefit of third parties.

In this regard, I have particularly warned that a ''Notice'' delivered to the service users by the PUC ''Infostan'' stating that should they no longer wish to receive the publicity material, they ought to sign a Declaration thereon and submit it to the work unit PUC ''Infostan'' in the municipality of their residence, and that their failure to do so shall be considered by the PCU ''Infostan'' as their agreement to continue to receive the said materials, shall produce no legal effect.

In addition to being a useless waste of the citizens' time, the imposition of such an ''obligation'' on the citizens is, of course, unlawful. Citizens are not required to sign any statements of this kind, and they have every right to demand that the public utility companies respect the citizens’ legal rights.

PCU ''Infostan'' from Belgrade shall, within 15 days from receiving the warning notice, inform the Commissioner on the measures undertaken and planned and on activities to remedy the said irregularities in the processing of personal data. I expect everyone to do so, and remind that it would be very useful for other public utility companies to do the same in the appropriate manner and without any special warning notices.“