[happylion0801]

Indias privacy laws are truly lacking. I am surprised that the government hasn’t enacted any laws for this yet.

I have a number of stories for this. Indians are so used to this that sometimes people are shocked when I say no to sharing information that they request.

For example in a startup, the HR reached out on WhatsApp to all employees in a group and asked for certain documents and information etc.

About Truecaller: - It’s default opt in (with almost no way to opt out*)

- It requires access to your entire contact list - to mitigate this, I request Apple and Google to implement folders for contacts or something similar to how you can limit access to all photos on iOS per app. That way you can create an empty folder and share it with Truecaller

- It’s also impossible to change the wrong data that Truecaller somehow gets from some other contact list

My sibling recently got a new number and Truecaller assumed some other name and identity. Fellow Indians believe Truecaller more than they believe the person they are talking to (shows how much spam gets passed around)

This is NOT just TrueCaller. The same thing happens with Paytm and other payment apps.

Paytm for example assumed another identity and they requested us to submit multiple docs to prove our identity even though we never used the platform before. Even after multiple attempts and submitting multiple ids they refuse to change the data

[redtriumph]

In India, privacy is always secondary. I remember, last time I was at jewelry shop in Western MH, I had to provide PAN card or Aadhar card since purchase warranted this check. W/o even thinking, folks in my family forwarded those details on Whatsapp.

[nindalf]

PAN Card - Tax identification

Aadhaar - “Universal” identifier. Needed for pretty much anything. Including, apparently, buying jewellery.

[d3nj4l]

AFAIK you're only required to give these details when your total bill exceeds a certain amount (~50,000?) and it's largely because buying gold/jewelry is a vector of money laundering and tax avoidance. I don't buy jewelry but ran into this recently when my mother wanted some.

[el-salvador]

Is it like in El Salvador, where the Unique ID number is even needed to pay the $2 water bill?

[GekkePrutser]

So if you're a tourist you can't buy anything? Weird.

Spain has a similar thing for this, you have to give your NIE/DNIe number everywhere. Like when ordering something online. But not in brick and mortar shops.

Still I find it a very poor practice in terms of privacy.

[pradn]

Buying stuff through QR codes is very common in India now. You can pay for everything from groceries to street food using QR codes. It runs off the government-sponsored UPI standard. However, AFAIK you need an Indian bank account to be able to participate. It's quite a pain coming from abroad, and I just used cash instead. That does mean I have am prone to paying foreign withdrawal fees, but alas. It does work pretty well for the people of India though.

[geodel]

Yeah, I truly wonder when 80 percent of population surviving on less than 2-3 dollars a day why doesn't government just double down on privacy first leaving everything else aside.

[happylion0801]

Not sure why you are being sarcastic. Being poor doesn’t mean people don’t deserve privacy. In fact it can enable for more business opportunities.

Government doesn’t operate in series on an issue one by one. This is why you have so many ministries in the govt. Just because roads don’t exist doesn’t mean govt should stop building railways and only think of roads.

[vishnugupta]

That's not the point though. Govt can sure enact/enforce tough laws. But poor people just don't care; for a few bucks they will happily part with their IDs and PII info. When demonetisation happened most of the ill-gotten currency made its way to the banking system through poor people's bank account.

In other words, privacy is a luxury that poor people can ill afford. Do poor deserve privacy? Absolutely. But it doesn't take much to get them part with their private data. They are stuck at the lowest level of Maslow hierarchy where as privacy is at least two level above them. Can government do something to protect their privacy? Probably, but I just can't see how it'll be successful when the citizens themselves don't care much about privacy.

[happylion0801]

makes sense, thanks for clarifying. I misunderstood GPs comment

[klyrs]

I believe that the point the sarcasm meant to address was that poorer people cannot afford to push back and prioritize their privacy the way that folks with more privilege can.

[happylion0801]

got it, I misunderstood GPs comment

[ALittleLight]

I really like the idea to share a fake list. I think creating separate contact list folders is a bit much for the user, but adding a general permission grant option like "As if empty" or "Use placeholder" might be easier. An app requests my contacts? I can "grant" permission to an empty contacts list.

I think this idea generalizes to other permissions too. Want to know my location? I hit the "placeholder" button and the app gets some generic location that never changes. Valid data flows through, so the app can work, but not my private information.