SWEDEN:For those of an inquisitive disposition, Sweden has long been a paradise. Thanks to its long tradition of openness, tabloid journalists, employers and ordinary nosey-parkers are legally able to access information on the salaries and tax bills of their fellow countrymen.
But 241 years after its first freedom of information law, there are signs that Sweden is rediscovering a taste for privacy.
A popular search website has shut down a facility which allowed Swedes to snoop on each others' salary information anonymously and free of charge, amid growing public disquiet and pressure from the authorities.
The site, Ratsit.se, was set up last November offering instant searches of personal financial data.
Simply by typing in a person's name, users were able to learn how much they earned, owed, had saved and paid in tax.
Though the information was already publicly available, spying into your colleagues' and neighbours' finances had never been so easy.
The site's popularity surged, with 610,000 of the country's nine million people registering as users, leading regulators to express concern that the function was being abused and could encourage fraud.
Hans Karlof, a lawyer at the Swedish data inspection board, said it had received "an avalanche" of complaints after the site's launch. These came mainly from people who felt the facility was being used unfairly.
The national tax board's response was to threaten to supply tax information - which it is legally required to do - in paper form only, which would have increased the website's administrative costs.
Ratsit had no option but to restrict the service: in the two weeks before the function was suspended last week, more than two million credit searches were made.
Information may now only be accessed after paying a fee of 15 kronor (€1.6) for 10 searches.
But what may really serve as a deterrent to users is the fact that their investigations are no longer anonymous: those being inquired about are e-mailed the details of the people doing the prying. - (Guardian service)