Privacy regulation is a set of rules and enforcement tools designed to control the collection and use of personal information. Not only these rules aim at protecting privacy, but also reducing the scope of misuses of information including identity theft, higher prices, spam, and effort spent by individuals to protect their data. The spectrum of privacy instruments varies from purely (self-regulating) market-based solutions to regulatory-orientated rules and from ex ante to ex post tools. The protection of personal data involves costs for firms, such as the restriction of available information and detrimental effects on innovation. From the consumer point of view, costs are related to consent and information issues, such as reading or writing privacy charts, complying with privacy standards and adopting privacy-enhancing technologies. Since there are privacy trade-offs arising from the interaction between this regulation and other economic and social issues, the economic impacts of privacy regulation depend to the adequacy of the privacy protection arrangement to the context.