“If you are using something for free, then you are the product” - The social dilemma.
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| Image generated through AI for representation |
While India has the largest internet base and users across the globe according to a report published by an independent organisation there are approximately around 627 million users that were the case in 2019 and this number might have swollen up accounting to various factors viz aggressive campaigning of internet usage by giant telecoms added to the factor of lockdown during which period all the people were free, hence the internet usage might have increased near about 200% which means the user base increased, even more, this is just a liberal calculation, adding the rural population the number might be somewhere around 800 million. Now, when we are looking at such a huge population with the fact that all these numbers are actual people who are using internet on daily basis, using innumerable applications and services, and till date never did the Government ever think of protecting the privacy of these millions of users?, it is astonishing that with such a huge number no one ever thought of framing a policy which could be introduced as a law in Indian jurisprudence and shifts the onus of protecting the user’s rights to the company.
There is a huge void when it comes to law regarding user privacy India should be ranked 1st from the end of the list, as we have just one flimsy framework concerning cybersecurity and cyber law, we lack a dedicated cybersecurity law in India, we just have a single information technology act of 2000 which acts as a deterrent for the malicious intentions of individuals, but fails to address the security issues that arise when a company or a corporation tries to infringe with individual’s privacy. While the European Union has strong laws regarding users’ data protection, India is yet to wake up and make a call regarding the same.
Why is this in the news now?
When Facebook acquired the instant messaging app back in 2014, several experts predicted and raised concern about the usage of user data and malicious intentions of Facebook, experts also suspected that this data would be sold to all private parties to make money and sell the lives of their users to these companies so that they could bombard the brain with lucrative advertisements and milk more and more money, you may ask what is wrong with it? Everyone in this world wants to earn money, and besides, the advertisements are customised by AI, hence they save a lot of time and hassle of searching for the right product we need to do a particular job. That’s the exact problem, they are customising the advertisement and hence there are chances that these companies will only suggest the products which are of big companies, or those who pay them more, in short, there is a monopoly in the market about the advertisement, later if a company A says I don’t want any other companies advertisements to be displayed and I am ready to pay XYZ amount then that particular company will have more customers which gradually will translate to market capturing, at a point the company will no longer need advertisement as it is well known and a huge chunk of society will brand it as most trusted business hence giving it monopolistic right over the market readily on a platter.
We also keep forgetting the case of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which came into light in 2018, where users’ data was used for political campaigning, and it is also accused of influencing the masses to vote for a particular candidate (who has paid more money for this campaign). Well, this is serious, and more so in the Indian context as we lack any law concerning the virtual world, hence anything done there is not an offence until its malicious, and taking this into account if some fine day the party In power decides to run a digital campaign aggressively and influence the minds what will the Indian judiciary do? Also, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI), campaigning for any election ought to be halted 48 hours before the commencement of the election. How will this rule be implemented in a virtual world without a proper mechanism in place? These are some questions we need to ask ourselves.
What's up with WhatsApp?
WhatsApp's privacy policy is the bone of contention, according to reports its is said that WhatsApp has been operating in this fashion and collecting data from 2016 it is just that now in 2020 it had decided to inform the users about the operation, this vital piece of information makes the condition even worse, Whatsapp when it started in 2009 the policy specifically stated that privacy is in our DNA and ironically the DNA changed when the parent company has changed, When WhatsApp was launched back in 2009, it had made commitments that it will not sell user data to any third party. This changed after Facebook acquired the platform in 2014, and in 2017, it started sharing data with its parent company, but users were given a choice not to opt for this. Now, this has changed into a ‘take it or leave it’ policy. For those who are thinking that the data is just being shared with its parent company, Facebook, you are wrong. Facebook has over 300 corporate clients with whom this data is shared, which essentially means that this data will be shared by these 300 clients and more if they are interested. The condition is very freaking, you only know about it when you understand its consequences. There is a very good example in the form of a story, that is often quoted at these instances, there was a man who was pummeling and crying out of his house when asked by the neighbours he said a thief broke into my house and stole a soapdish, he cried for so long and people said he was mad to cry on such a trivial thing, intrigued by the incident a student couldn't resist his curiosity and asked why are you crying about the soapdish its just a small item, to which the man replied, son its not about the soapdish, that man broke in and saw the whole house but took only the soapdish to make a mark that I was here, he had more information about my house.
This is the gravity of the situation that we are in right now, though a trivial amount of data might be taken from us, this, in reality, is your whole life. Be careful of what you do on the internet.
The govt is still in a Lala land that in case of any adversity we can just ban the application, its high time that we learn blanket ban is not a good alternative to any problem of the privacy breach, the speed with which we are banning the application we shall end up with a play store where you can just update the preinstalled application, then there shall be no difference between a normal phone and a smartphone. This state also reminds me of a situation which arose in Tamilnadu, the famous case of Bawaria gang which notoriously killed the resident of the house and looted all the money, leaving practically no trace, being a foragers community it became extremely difficult for police to track them and no one took interest in bringing these criminals to book until an MLA of the ruling party was killed by the same gang, the govt and police department actively took interest in this gang and within a few years the accused were bought to book and given right punishment, what I understand here is until and unless a big elephant is shot dead with a bullet the govt doesn’t care of the situation, what are we waiting in this case, are we waiting for an instance where a big politician’s personal life is exposed, and he, in turn, creates a law and order issue? Are we waiting for something even more nefarious to happen so that our government wakes up just to make a strong data protection law??
Until there is a data protection law in place, stay safe and be aware of what is being shared by you share on any social media. To be safer, just make sure you have fewer social media accounts.
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