In Italy nearly all the offices enjoy of a fax system, but the cost of faxing from these places is usually fairly high.

Internet Access and checking your e-mail in Italy now requires a passport.

If you are thinking about visiting Italy in the near future, and you plan on using Italian Internet cafés while on the go, there is something you should definitely be informed about. An antiterrorism law makes Internet cafe managers check their clients' IDs and track the websites they visit. Italy passed a law that everyone using public internet must present an identity document, and accept the idea that all that you will look at, play with or send out is being tracked for the purpose of supporting your safety against terror attacks. So when you go to Italy, be prepared to show your passport before using the internet. They will make a photocopy of the passport or record your name and passport number. We were told that this is aimed at increasing security and preventing terrorism.

The new law states that those in charge of managing and providing public communications services, need to make photocopies of the passport of every customer coming to use them, be they Internet, phone or fax ones. The law creates a difficult operational climate for the many Internet cafès operating in Italy, and many a owner do not find themselves at ease when needing to perform all of this extra paper work while intruding into the privacy of their walk-by customers.

Internet cafés owners must not only collect and verify a person first name and last name, but they need also to log the time they started using a computer, and which computer they specifically used. But that is not enough: computers in public places need also to keep track of which files and applications are used, which web pages are visited and for how long. In practice, anything you do today in an Italian Internet café is basically logged and referenced to your name on paper.

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