A survey released this week revealed that one in two Indians admitted to receiving advertisements based on their private voice talk.
According to a survey conducted by community social media platform LocalCircles, over 53% of citizens indicated that they have seen ads on the web or app based on a phone conversation at least once in the past year.
Of those who have had such an experience, 28% said it happened frequently, 19% said it happened several times, and 6% said it happened only a few times.
Only 24% claimed it never happened, while 23% were undecided.
It was also found that majority of Indians have enabled microphone access of their mobile phones for audio/video calls, social networking and third-party audio recording apps.
About 84% of smartphone users admitted to giving WhatsApp access to their contact list, 51% to Facebook or Instagram (or both) and 41% to caller information applications such as Truecaller.
Sachin Taparia, Founder, LocalCircles said: “A large number of people are raising the issue of watching relevant ads after their personal phone conversations and this is very worrying.”
According to him, such methods need to be reviewed and apps that require microphone access must have a clear representation about how their data will be used and clear authorization must be obtained.
The Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, which aims to give legislative and statutory protection to the personal information of users or citizens, is yet to be ratified by the government.
The then Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad introduced the bill in the Lok Sabha in December 2019. It aims to ensure that personal data belonging to individuals is protected and to do so, it establishes a data protection authority.
The Bill regulates the processing of personal data by foreign firms dealing with i) the government, ii) companies incorporated in India, and iii) personal data of Indians.
However, the survey findings will be shared with Information technology Ministry, Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), and Reserve Bank India (RBI) for further action.
Taparia said: “If this is not done at the earliest, such access can easily lead to financial fraud and people’s personal information can be compromised and there is no accountability for how this happened. “
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