European Union data privacy regulators have served notice they do not want companies to market Internet software or hardware that collects information about Europeans without those citizens' knowledge.

National officials from the 15 EU countries have adopted a recommendation that the bloc's tough new data privacy law should require manufacturers to ensure that customers are given tools to control what is transmitted about them.

"Presently it is almost impossible to use the Internet without being confronted with privacy-invading features which carry out all kinds of processing operations of personal data in a way that is invisible to the data subjects," it says.