VPNs with servers in Côte d’Ivoire

Service providers must keep subscriber data, integrity protected, for ten years (art. 72); if a sender cannot be traced for want of it, the provider faces a fine of 10 to 50 million CFA francs. On a prosecutor’s requisition or an investigating judge’s order, providers must help collect traffic or content data in real time (art. 77); refusal carries three to six months’ imprisonment and a fine (art. 78).

Internet access providers must also offer a visible reporting channel for illegal activity and tell the authorities promptly of reports (art. 51). Whether a VPN operator falls within these categories is not established.

Under art. 45, a provider offering access to online communication services, or storing content, must on the decision of the competent judge suspend access to the services or content at once. Providers of access must tell subscribers that technical means exist to restrict or select services and offer at least one (arts. 44–45). Internet access in a cybercafé for a minor under eighteen excludes pornographic, violent, racist or degrading sites (art. 43).

The holder of an internet access service must see that it is not used for manifestly illicit ends, notably unauthorised reproduction of works, and may be prosecuted as an accomplice for supplying the means (art. 36). Online gambling is a State concession (art. 37), and running it without authorisation is punished (art. 38).

Committed through an information system, the 2013 law punishes racist or xenophobic material (art. 58, ten to twenty years), threats of death or violence (art. 59, two to five years), outrageous expression or invective that imputes no fact (art. 60, one to ten years since the amending law of 7 June 2023), genocide denial (art. 61, three to five years) and a false report of destruction or harm (art. 65, six months to two years).

An account is traced through the identification data kept under art. 53 and the subscriber data kept under art. 72, which the competent authority may require a provider to hand over on a prosecutor’s requisition or an investigating judge’s order (art. 74).

Real-time collection of traffic or content data needs a prosecutor’s requisition or an investigating judge’s order (art. 77), and the State compensates providers’ identifiable extra costs. Data stored abroad but reachable from a searched system is collected subject to international commitments (art. 75). The law creates no separate oversight body for these measures.

The order of the rows is the security score, and a server’s location is not a recommendation.