Is India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act Guard Our Privacy?

Source Domain: indianexpress.com

Our parents taught us not to trust strangers. Not to answer every question they asked. Not to give away our school name, our address, or family details casually. Not to let someone into the house if they could not account for themselves. That wisdom passed through generations, shaped by a simple instinct: Certain information, once given away, cannot be taken back.

I thought about that wisdom recently in a room full of people who would have completely agreed with it, and then gone right back to scrolling.

A friend of mine had just bought a smart ring. The recommendation came from his gym trainer. They are quite friendly, so the advice did not arrive in a formal or commercial manner. If anything, that made it more trustworthy. The ring tracked sleep, heart rate, recovery scores, activity levels, and stress indicators through skin temperature. Every morning, he checked his data, adjusted his training accordingly, and discussed the numbers with his trainer. It gave him a feeling that things were under control.

And honestly, I understood the appeal. Everyone in the room wanted one. So did I. A device that could optimise your life felt efficient, aspirational, and, in the language my generation understands instinctively, extremely cool.

But when I asked where the data went, the room was silent for some seconds, then went indifferent.

One friend wanted to know, “Who is going to look at my sleep data?” Another checked whether the ring came in different colours. My friend assumed the information stayed on the app.

Nobody in that room was unintelligent. My generation cannot simply be described as ignorant. We are educated, digitally fluent, and fully aware that privacy exists as both a concept and a right. But knowing privacy exists and knowing how to practice it as a dynamic right are two different things.

The ring now gathers some of the most intimate data a body can produce and feeds it into a chain of systems neither of us can fully trace. My friend trusts his…

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