India - Online Privacy Laws need an Amendment too
It’s good that the Union Cabinet today approved amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2000, aimed at checking information theft and online fraud.
But I don’t think that it covers online privacy. On an average I receive 5 sales calls daily and 20 marketing sms messages, some originating from the service provider itself and many from unknown senders and “affiliates” from sites I gave my number to.
We need strong laws to prevent data sharing and selling by the companies in India. With mobile social networking on its boom in India, one needs to be extra cautious while submitting your number at these sites, as you might as well be inviting more spam sms messages to your phone.
Have a look at this clause in the “Privacy” statement of one of the sites:
“We may provide information to service providers to help us bring you the services we offer. Specifically, we may use third parties to facilitate our business, such as to send email solicitations. In connection with these offerings and business operations, our service providers may have access to your personal information for use in connection with these business activities.”
We reserve the right to change our privacy policy at any time. If we do this, we will post the changes to this policy on this page and will indicate at the top of this page the policy’s effective date. We therefore encourage you to refer to this policy on an ongoing basis so that you understand our current privacy policy.
I do not understand the exact legal implication as such, but simply put it means that the owners of the website would be free to change there privacy policy so “keep checking” and they could as well use your personal information to “facilitate” their business (sell this data to advertisers???).
Is there a way to ensure that this data does not get shared (read sold) with telemarketers?
India certainly needs some amendments to online privacy laws as well.
IndianPad said
am October 16 2006 @ 7:52 pm
Internet in India » India - Online Privacy Laws need an Amendment too…
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am October 16 2006 @ 8:15 pm
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Abhishek said
am October 17 2006 @ 12:07 pm
I think there is already a law around unsolicited phone calls from these companies and they are bound to have an interface where you can register to not get bothered again. And I completely agree that this order should also be extended to emails and SMSes. Other than that if you do not want your data to be shared I would suggest not using the service of the organization which have such clauses in their “Terms and Conditions”.
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IPR.RAJAVENKATESAN said
am November 26 2007 @ 7:39 am
Now a days,Online privacy is a “hot button issue” due to reason of development of information technology.There is no special legislation in India to pertaining about privacy issues separately.But constitution of india has given some special attention for protection of privacy by way of Article.21.It seems to be considered as most valuable right to individuals.But now right to privacy has become on problematic issues.
This right has been recognised in india by way judicial activisam.According to my point of view,when we look upon the Information Technology Act,2000,It has given some space for right to privacy impliedely rather than express sound manner.Now the Amendments have been proposed by the consent authority in Information Technology Act.2001.And also some other bodies like CRID institute of ‘NAMUR” has proposed to amend Sections,43,65,66,72.In which they have discussed about Dataprotection and privacy.In India there is another Act name called Telecom Regulatory Authority OF India,1997 sketched something about privacy concern in telecommunication.It needs to India to amend information technology Act,2000 for the purpose of inviting multinational companies for the purpose of more investment on the one side and development of technology on the otherside.Because lack of protection of online privacy and data protection law will lead to indian government to decrease economic development in the absence of foreign direct invest ment.