Amid privacy concerns, cyber experts stress need for a strong data protection bill

Amid concerns about the recent change in WhatsApp's privacy policy, cyber experts have opined that the messaging app is taking advantage as India has no law on privacy and data protection and enforcing personal data protection bill is the need of the hour.

New Delhi: Amid the privacy scare that WhatsApp will start sharing some data with Facebook and its allied companies, cyber experts opined that the messaging app is taking advantage as India has no law on privacy and data protection and enforcing personal data protection bill is the need of the hour.

"Despite two bills being presented to the Parliament for the data protection in 2018 and 19, no law so far has been passed and enacted in India and WhatsApp is also trying to take advantage of this situation that the law on the privacy and data protection doesn't exist in the country," said Anuj Agarwal, Chairman, Center for Research on Cybercrime and Cyberlaw.

Talking about the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, Anuj Agarwal said, "the bill is already good but the need is to pass it in the parliament and then strictly enforce it. If there are some lacunas, they can always be taken care of by amendments later on when it is put in use."

Since, there is no law, all social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook are taking advantage of their being no law and thereby breaching the privacy of the individuals, he added.

Speaking about the other alternative apps to WhatsApp, which are claiming it to be more focused on users privacy, the cyber expert said, "almost all the apps will probably behave in a similar manner because when there is no law, there is nothing to prevent them from changing policies from time to time."

"Signal app may be claiming what WhatsApp was claiming some years back that they will protect the users' data and they will not share it with anyone. But, what's the guarantee that this app will not share users data in future. So, this possibility exists and the right remedy is to have a strong law to protect the data and privacy of the citizens of the country," said the cyber expert.

Notably, WhatsApp has been sharing user data with its parent company Facebook since 2016 but with the option to opt-out of some of them.

The policy update, which takes effect on 8 February, reserves the right to share some user data including location and phone number with Facebook and its units.