Loi n°2010/012 du 21 décembre 2010 relative à la cybersécurité et à la cybercriminalité au Cameroun, article 74 (atteinte à la vie privée et traitement illicite des données à caractère personnel)
Loi n°2010/012 du 21 décembre 2010, art. 74
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force since 21 December 2010.
An enforcement supervision rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 4 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not record, fix, or transmit another person's private or confidential electronic data without their consent, and do not intercept personal data while it is in transit between information systems.
- Do not process personal data without complying with the prior declaration or authorization formalities the law requires before implementing the processing.
- Do not collect a person's nominative data by unlawful means in order to harm their privacy or standing.
- Do not put online, keep, or store, without the data subject's express agreement, nominative data revealing tribal origin, political or religious opinions, trade-union membership, or morals, and do not divert such data in the course of recording, filing, or transmitting it.
- Do not retain nominative or encrypted personal data beyond the legal duration stated in the request for opinion or prior declaration for the processing, and do not disclose nominative data in a way that harms the person it concerns.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Article 74 carries eight tiers of criminal penalty across its alinéas: one to two years' imprisonment and a 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 FCFA fine for unconsented recording or transmission of private data or interception of personal data in transit (alinéas 1-2); one to three years and 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 FCFA for processing without the required prior formalities (alinéa 3); six months to two years and 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 FCFA for unlawfully collecting nominative data to harm a person's privacy or standing (alinéa 4), doubled to one to four years and 2,000,000 to 10,000,000 FCFA for putting online or storing sensitive-category nominative data without express agreement, or diverting such data (alinéas 5-6); and six months to two years with the article's highest fine, 5,000,000 to 50,000,000 FCFA, for retaining data beyond its legal retention period or for a disclosure that harms the victim's standing (alinéas 7-8).
Penalty structure
Article 74(7)-(8) sets the article's highest fine tier, 5,000,000 to 50,000,000 FCFA (XAF), with a comparatively low six-months-to-two-years prison term, for retaining nominative or encrypted personal data beyond its stated legal retention period, or for a disclosure of nominative data that harms the person's standing. The article's other tiers are lower: 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 FCFA at alinéas 1-4, doubled to 2,000,000 to 10,000,000 FCFA at alinéas 5-6 for sensitive-category data put online or diverted without consent. None of the article's tiers multiply by violation count; each is a fixed range per offence.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 4 September 2026
- Currency
- XAF
- Fixed cap
- 50,000,000
What it reaches
Obligation class
Consent, Biometric, Retention, Security
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Article 74 of Cameroon's cybersecurity and cybercrime law, sitting in the law's own offences-and-sanctions chapter (Title III, Chapter II, Articles 60 to 89), criminalizes a range of personal-data misuse that predates and now sits alongside the 2024 comprehensive statute.
It punishes recording, fixing, or transmitting private or confidential electronic data without the data subject's consent, and intercepting personal data during its transmission between information systems, with one to two years' imprisonment and a fine of 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 FCFA (alinéas 1 and 2).
It separately punishes processing personal data in violation of the prior formalities required before implementation, with one to three years and a fine of 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 FCFA (alinéa 3), and collecting nominative data by unlawful means to harm a person's privacy or standing, with six months to two years and the same fine range (alinéa 4).
Those alinéa-4 penalties are doubled against a person who puts online, keeps, or stores in computerized memory, without the data subject's express agreement, nominative data revealing tribal origin, political or religious opinions, trade-union membership, or morals, and the doubled penalty also reaches a person who diverts such information in the course of recording, filing, or transmitting it (alinéas 5 and 6).
The highest fine in the article, 5,000,000 to 50,000,000 FCFA (with a lower six-months-to-two-years prison term), punishes retaining information in nominative or encrypted form beyond the legal duration stated in the request for opinion or prior declaration for the automated processing, and the same penalty reaches disclosing nominative data in a way that harms the victim's standing (alinéas 7 and 8).
When LexLint raises it
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