Information Technology or in simple words the world of the internet has become a need for us. We are using the internet or digital products for most of the work we do. The Internet become the medium of education, communication, and business. But what will be your reaction when I say “Most of the things you share on the internet are hackable” Shocking! right, but that’s the truth. Here hacking doesn’t mean gaining access to your system or privacy. Companies are using your data to gain access to your mind and psychology. They bribe you by giving you some freebies and collecting your data. After collecting the information they attract you by sending you offers and hitting your ability of thinking.
If a user searches for something on the search engine and soon after some time they start getting ads related to the product. Companies are selling our information like name, email, phone, and buying behavior to control our way of thinking. Data privacy become a serious matter of concern. Let’s Understand more about this in detail
What is Data Privacy?
Data privacy or digital privacy means securing your critical information to prevent any unauthorized access to your data. It comprises all the methods, protocols, and procedures applied by users in order to secure sensitive information. Most of the users are not aware of this reason being a lack of education related to technology. In India, people hardly care about the authenticity of the online platform before sharing their personal information. Smartphones have become an essential part of people and businesses too.
There is a famous saying “If someone has access to your phone they have access to your life”. Because our phone has all the sensitive information like our bank details, social media accounts, photos, videos, and location. We are living in a time when phones are becoming smarter than some people. And if you are not aware of the privacy of information then ready to face some negative impact.
Yahoo Company witnessed the world’s biggest data breach in 2016 where almost 3 billion users’ data was compromised in various cyber-attacks. Information includes the name, email address, residential address, gender, and date of birth of the users. This incident impacted the reputation of yahoo in the wrong way. Alibaba is one of the major e-commerce giants of the world and also faced the same issue in 2013. When a developer crawled the data of 1.1 billion users along with their credit card details. Users share their information while shopping and this information are used for many purposes like customer service, future marketing, and impacting our buying behavior. Here the need for information privacy arises to secure us from potential cyber-attacks.
Why is Data Privacy Important?
For Business
- Build Trust: No one wants to associate with a business that has been involved in a breach of data. If a company is found guilty of such kind of practice then it will lose all the trust of users we can understand this by the example of Facebook, In 2018 facebook faced some serious allegations of selling the user’s information, and soon after the news out company lost billions of dollars in share market.
- Protect Right to Privacy: For all the companies who collect any kind of information about the user, it’s their responsibility to secure their privacy. Companies have to make sure that no one will have access to private information about the user whether it’s inside the organization or outside. It shows their code of ethics toward their work and users.
- Increase the Revenue: All the companies that maintain the information secure and prevent unauthorized access have competitive advantages over other businesses. Firstly they can avoid all the data breaches which may lead to business downtime and a single data breach can increase the cost by up to 90%. Secondly, a large pool of customers attracted towards your product or software and it ll strong customer loyalty. For example, recently Whatsapp announced a controversial privacy policy that favors Meta (Parent company of WhatsApp). Users have realized that and they started switching to other apps that have user-friendly policies like telegram and signal.` And this leads to a situation where WhatsApp has to withdraw its all policies.
For Users
- Privacy: In the digital world, nothing is more important than the privacy of users. All the companies are looking to gather more and more information about the users to create a strategy to target them. And for that, they are ready to sneak peek into our personal life. So it’s our responsibility to share a limited amount of information.
- Security: In the fintech world, 95% of the users use their smartphones for the day to day transactions. All of our financial details are locked in the phone and everything in the phone is vulnerable if you are not aware. If anyone somehow manages to gain access to your phone then he or she can use your data in the wrong way. And here the concept of data privacy becomes more important to all the users.
Ways to Secure Your Data:
- Install the trustworthy updated antivirus in your system.
- Always use a unique password for all login portals. Avoid using personal details such as name, dob, and number as passwords.
- Do not Fill up your personal details on any platform.
- Do not allow all the permission to the app while installing it.
- Make sure not to download and install an app from a third-party portal.
- Lock all the baking or personal info-related apps and folders with passcodes.
- Try not to open links from spam mail.
- Use a telegram bot to generate temporary mail for creating an account on a website. If you want to use that website only once.
- Every 24 hours, clear the cache from your browser.
- Make sure you have turned off the “save password ” feature in the browser.
Information Technology Act in India
| Offense | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Tampering with computer source documents | Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with a fine of up to ₹200,000 |
| Hacking with computer system | Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹500,000 |
| Receiving a stolen computer or communication device | Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹100,000 |
| Using the password of another person | Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹100,000 |
| Cheating using computer resource | Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹100,000 |
| Publishing private images of others | Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with fine up to ₹200,000 |
| Acts of cyberterrorism | Imprisonment up to life. |
| Publishing information that is obscene in electronic form. | Imprisonment up to five years, or/and with fine up to ₹1,000,000 |
| Publishing images containing sexual acts | Imprisonment up to seven years, or/and with fine up to ₹1,000,000 |
| Failure to maintain records | Imprisonment up to three years, or/and with a fine. |
| Failure/refusal to comply with orders | Imprisonment up to 2 years, or/and with a fine up to ₹100,000 |
| Failure/refusal to decrypt data | Imprisonment up to seven years and a possible fine. |
| Securing access or attempting to secure access to a protected system | Imprisonment up to ten years, or/and with a fine. |
| Misrepresentation | Imprisonment up to 2 years, or/and with a fine up to ₹100,000 |
| Breach of confidentiality and privacy | Imprisonment up to 2 years, or/and with a fine up to ₹100,000 |
| Disclosure of information in breach of lawful contract | Imprisonment up to 3 years, or/and with a fine up to ₹500,000 |
| Publishing electronic signature certificate false in certain particulars | Imprisonment up to 2 years, or/and with a fine up to ₹100,000 |
| Publication for the fraudulent purpose | Imprisonment up to 2 years, or/and with a fine up to ₹100,000 |
Conclusion: Why Digital Privacy is Must?
All the innovations are made for the betterment of humans whether it’s related to technology or any other field. Technology in the last two decades plays an important role in the development of humans, especially the internet. It builds a world where we interact with the rest of the world and perform most of the real-world tasks. Since we are spending time on the internet we also share some information over there it may be personal details, bank details, or our interactions with others. All of us know that if someone has access to our details it makes us vulnerable. Companies are using this at a psychological level and analyzing our online behavior to target the right product. A lot of campaigns are run by them just to influence you to buy some stuff. They sell our information to other businesses too which are making us hackable not only virtually but also mentally.