Increasing digital advertisement is undermining the privacy of users
The recent consciousness shown by the citizens of our country about their privacy has pushed the mighty instant messaging app, Whatsapp, to hold its new privacy policy which was allowing the sharing of its users’ data with Facebook for digital advertisements. As the active internet users are rising in India, the way of advertisement is also getting a new shape through various digital marketing platforms (also called as Ad network partners).
These digital platforms allow the advertisers to target the audience specifically as per their business needs. The audience data is collected either by Ad platforms or by the advertisers or sometimes in the worst-case scenario, purchased from the open market. We are witnessing certain companies that start their business by providing deep discounts to acquire more and more users and once a good amount of user data is created, these companies are either acquired by a big firm (also referred to as the flipping of start-ups) or these companies sell their data to earn profit. This data generally includes personal information of the users such as phone number, email id, address, age, etc. which is often shared without the consent of the users.
Some additional data is also collected through the Software Development Kits (SDKs) integrated with the apps of these companies which also causes the risk of stealing some private information from the users’ phones. Gandhi Ji considered ‘Commerce without Morality’ as a sin but the profit motives of certain companies do not care about the ethics in business. Sometimes this collected data reaches the hands of companies involved in online banking frauds. They target innocent people for their monetary motives. During the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown, we have witnessed both an increase in the number of active digital users and an increase in online frauds.
The other channel of digital marketing includes promotion through bulk SMS and emails. These SMS and emails contain deep links that direct the users to a specific page of the website or app of a company. This type of marketing is again often done without the consent of users and most of the time, the users have no option to opt-out. Bulk SMS-based promotion has another problem of creating cyber threats where hackers can send similar malicious links either to do bank fraud or to steal the personal data of the users. Some other concerns of digital advertisement involve its excess use for the promotion of online gambling which traps mainly teenagers and adolescents and deteriorates their financial position.
During the elections, the use of digital ads has become common to influence the opinion of the voters. The Cambridge Analytica data scandal is a big example before us to see how the personal data of millions of people can be used without their consent to influence the outcome of an election. Another concern is the absence of any limitation on the frequency of an Ad that can be served to a single user per day, week, or month. These numbers are currently being decided by the budget of the advertiser. The higher the budget, the larger the audience will be targeted for a larger number of times. The political parties with more budget can easily influence the outcome of the election by showing Ads more frequently.
To counter fraudulent activities, the sharing of links in SMS-based promotions should be discouraged and the sharing of SMS should be restricted only to the registered users and with an option to opt-out any time. The business-to-customer (B2C) communication should be done using the internet or landline-based calls instead of calls from mobile phones so that the users can recognize the genuineness of the company.
The Election Commission of India should make it mandatory for all digital ads platforms to disclose information about the spending of the digital marketing campaigns of each political party and candidate. No political party should be allowed to get an unfavorable advantage of digital ads to win the elections. As enshrined in our constitutions, the elections must be fair and without the influence of excessive money power. Also, a dedicated institution should be created to report the violation of rules dealing with the privacy of the citizens. The right to privacy has been considered as a fundamental right under the right to life and personal liberty (Article-21) by the Supreme Court in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy vs. Union of India Case (2017).
The government also needs to accelerate the process of passing the comprehensive Personal Data Protection Bill. The bill should consider the recommendations of both Justice B.N. Srikrishna committee on data privacy and Kris Gopalakrishnan committee on sharing of non-personal data. This bill should also include other dimensions such as cyber security and online banking fraud. There should be proper guidelines for the type of data that can be collected by a company. We also need to impose a ban on the sharing of all personal and sensitive non-personal data between the companies as the European Parliament did under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
At a time when we have already issued the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 to regulate the misinformation and fake news on the social media platforms and pornographic content on the Over The Top (OTT) platforms, we also need to ensure that the privacy of no innocent user is breached during the implementation process of these guidelines.
