A few weeks ago, Sanjay Lal, a resident of Gurugram’s DLF Phase 3 towers, started a movement in his gated society against the usage of apps like MyGate, NoBrokerhood, and ADDA Gatekeeper. He had recently contested in the Haryana assembly elections as an independent candidate, and would have people from all walks of life come and meet him at his residence. Lal alleged in media reports that his privacy was breached when information about who all were visiting his place was made available to his neighbours through one such gate app. Since then, he’s been pushing the society’s association to cancel its agreement with the app they use.
The age of the internet. The digital world. The post-truth era. Adages like these are often used to describe the times we live in. To be fair, none of them are inaccurate. In today’s times, probably the most valuable assets that people have (which would be an indispensable part of their earthquake kits) are their phones, laptops, and smart devices. We wake up looking at these screens, and go to sleep looking at them too. But there’s another proverb used every so often about the ‘digital age’ — Privacy is a myth.
For those living in gated societies and working office jobs, we often part with a lot of data on a daily basis without giving a second thought to it. We’re not talking about basic details such as your name, your age, your phone number, your email address, etc — which your digital devices would probably already have saved in tens of places. But other data that you might have unknowingly or unintentionally shared with it.
Want to mark office attendance on your phone? Location permission needs to be switched on, more often than not the camera as well. Have ordered food online, and need to give entry permission to the delivery person? Register on the gate app and give it access to practically your entire day plan. Placing an order through e-commerce or quick commerce companies? Give your address, your preferred payment mode, potentially information about what time you’re usually at home – all this apart from the data that is mined through your likes, dislikes, and online behaviour. Want to do a bank transaction or pay someone? You’re giving your phone access to absolutely the most sensitive and confidential information through UPI and banking apps. Or leave all that, simply want to see who the unknown caller on your phone is? Reports have suggested that caller ID apps like Truecaller can read your messages, store your entire contacts directory in their database and breach the privacy of your contacts even if they’ve not registered or downloaded the app ever.
All this, even as the Supreme Court held in the 2017 KS Puttaswamy vs Union of India ruling that privacy is a fundamental right under Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution. And yet, data breaches, identity theft, and cyber crimes are threats that keep looming over us.
More often than not, data that you think is harmless and don’t realise is being shared or stored is used by the many apps on your phone (and ultimately minted).
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But, to be honest, is there a lot you can do when it comes to decreasing your digital footprint? The internet has made our lives so convenient, that even when people know they are parting with sensitive information, they sometimes don’t mind it to a great extent.
Experts suggest that the least you can do to keep your data protected is update your phone regularly and create complex passwords.
Earlier this year, the ministry of electronics and information technology also released the draft rules of the Digital Data Protection Bill 2023 to ensure that personal data of individuals is not misused. According to the draft rules, data fiduciaries (like social media platforms and e-commerce apps) will only be able to process data that users consent to, and they can only store this up until a certain time period, following which it’ll have to be deleted.
The notification of the draft rules said that data fiduciaries could face penalties of up to Rs 250 crore if they are found in violation of data privacy. While the rules are yet to come into place, the bottomline is that while it’s hard to decrease digital reliance and our digital footprint, it remains important to be wary of who and where we are sharing our data with.