Right to be forgotten :
What if you were caught and filmed by traffic police for drunken driving and posted on online platforms, What if your old photographs of yours along with your old spouse effecting your relationship with the new spouse, does this mean mistakes of your personal life remains in public knowledge for generations? The right to be forgotten in short is referred to as RTBF and it guarantees us the right to have private information about a person be removed from Internet searches and other directories under reasonable circumstances.
With the act in place as part of GDPR compliance (Not in India), the platform provider has to delete all the personal data or any other data pertaining to that specific user. However, contrary to the user expectation, users continue to receive quasi-similar experiences while requesting for deletion of data.
Intellectuals across the world have referred this to as “respect to access of information” as an “international human right”. In this modern information technology age, data is touted as Gold and there is enough evidence (proof) that almost all online services that we use today are found to be pressurising users to generate and share data in exchange of monetary fees (monetisation) for those services.
Are we private on social media :
Social media can be handled well, it’s the greatest way to promote a product and make people think of you in a positive way. It can be a great way to get in touch with old friends, or just keep an eye on what your family tree is up to. Based on the interactions on social Media, every behavioural aspect of the individual is being monitored documented & Harvested for a probable commercial use. Technology Organisations are stealing your private words, actions, conversations, photos and then making them public and making them public without context and making them public without compassion. The marketplace has emerged where public shaming is a commodity and shame is an industry. Nowadays Money is made on the clicks, the more shame the more clicks the more the advertising revenue.
Too much information sharing on Social Media leads to few issues like cyberstalking, live location disclosure, social profiling, phishing, identity theft, blackmailing, 3rd party personal information disclosure, and government use of social media platforms in investigations even without a search warrant! If social media platforms are not managed well, they can ruin your life. There is an increasing concern in digital, personal and health wellbeing issues due to the over-usage of social media and these platforms have created chaos for users.
Social media by definition it has a very invasive approach towards privacy and there’s no way to completely block people. There is nothing on the internet that can be permanently erased, it’s wise to keep your social media accounts “Private” unless you’re a celebrity or business owner or Political Party Member, or Social Activist.
Cookies are making us public :
In the pretext of providing better user experience almost all technology companies have fostered the development of cookie like tracking systems that are harder for a user to detect or delete, and can provide marketers with a rich source of data about individual.
The publishing and advertising ecosystem available on all online platforms must reform and gain trust lost due to widespread bad practices. Technology companies should move towards a universal opt-out for users who do not wish themselves to get tracked for good.
Social Media Links on Right to be Forgotten :
- https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en
- https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout?pli=1
- https://gdpr.twitter.com/en.html
- https://www.facebook.com/business/gdpr
- https://business.safety.google/compliance/
- https://privacy.linkedin.com/gdpr
Conclusion :
End-user is the largest stake holder but they are ill-informed about the consequences of their personal data’s collection, processing, and monetisation. Clause 20 under Chapter V of this Personal Data Protection Draft Bill titled “Rights of Data Principal” mentions the “Right to be Forgotten.” It states that the principal owner of the data shall have the right to restrict or prevent the continuing disclosure of his personal data by online platforms or intermediaries.
We should have technology experts, civil society, academia, judicial experts along with the government to look into all the possible facets of Right to Privacy and Right to be Forgotten and recommend in a suitable manner in which it can provide a guideline that does not hinder the civil rights of citizens. More important is that the legislators should learn how the internet actually works before passing legislation of a global reach.
Law shouldn’t only be seen as an approach to solve the problem. Instead, it is up to the end-users, to understand how valuable their private information and educate themselves on what happens to our personal data if its publicly available.
