All your data belong to private business!

Yesterday, we published a report about risk of data theft when you travel abroad. Not so complicated for Indians, just going about our daily lives is enough for all our data to be put at risk.

Read this report by Archana Chaudhary in Economic Times

A billion India identities at risk as PM Narendra Modi widens digital reach

“The government is seeking to link the database, with information on about 88 percent of the population of more than 1.2 billion, including children, to all state services — from school admissions to passports and the purchase of cooking gas. In effect, it would create more large databases. But in a nation without an overarching privacy law, Indians have few options for redress in the event of identity theft or data leaks. ”

“The program now has 582 banks, brokerages and government departments listed as registered users permitted to access Aadhaar’s data. At the same time, private companies obtaining and offering services based on Aadhaar data have proliferated.”

“In April 2013, the western state of Maharashtra said it irretrievably lost the data of 300,000 citizens while uploading files to Aadhaar’s servers in Bangalore”.

If you think, these are teething troubles and problems will be ironed out with time, think again. Think about road contracts, pollution control, vehicle registration, election campaigns of political parties etc in our country.

How the system is subverted for personal gains and corruption by bureaucrats, politicians and businesses. Do you think Aadhaar will be an exception?

To sample how the market  operates, read this. this report talks about data collected from non-Aadhaar sources, but it shows how data is traded in India.

How data brokers are selling all your personal info for less than a rupee to whoever wants it

“If data is the new oil, then there is a gigantic oil spill all around you. Your personal data — be it your residential address, your phone number, email id, details of what you bought online, age, marital status, income and profession — is all up for sale. Most of this personal data is sold for less than a rupee per person — the cost of a chewing gum.”

“For anywhere between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000, we were offered personal data of up to 1 lakh people in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi.”

“Most of the data is sold to us by mobile service providers, agents from hospitals and banks, loan agents, car dealers,”

“One data broker said he could get lists of high net worth individuals, salaried people, credit card holders, car owners and retired women in any given vicinity.”