On September 19, the Minister of Telecommunications, Andrés Michelena, presented the Personal Data Bill to the President of the National Assembly, César Litardo. The bill establishes that personal data should be considered sensitive, obliging financial institutions to request data holder to issue express consent for their use. The measure is expected to begin to be studied in the coming weeks. 

The bill proposes that companies using data must inform owners beforehand of the use to which the data will be put and how long the information is to be kept. It also proposes that international transfers only be allowed in countries with adequate levels of protection. The text is expected to be referred to a committee which will begin studying the bill in the next few weeks.

The presentation of the bill comes amid revelations by the Israeli computer security firm VpnMentor that financial data belonging to millions of Ecuadorian citizens were recently leaked.