Consumer Privacy

External Context Ecology Consumers

Consumer Privacy What’s the big deal? Why do we need a law? Formation of the Law The Law Information Technology Act 2000 Case

Measures taken by commercial organizations to ensure that confidential customer data is not stolen or abused. Laws and regulations that seek to protect any individual from loss of privacy due to failures or limitations of corporate customer privacy measures.

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Sensitive information is required to meet the customers’ demands for services and products.

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Consumers have an expectation that their information will not be shared without their consent.

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Identity theft and data breaches are on the rise.

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Consumers, investors, public policy-makers & the media have taken notice of these trends.

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Dramatic increase in credit based products.

The damage done by privacy loss is typically not measurable, nor can it be undone, and that commercial organizations have little or no interest in taking unprofitable measures to drastically increase privacy of consumer indeed, their motivation is very often quite the opposite, to share data for commercial advantage, and they fail to officially recognize it as sensitive. People -- not computers -- are often the weakest link in a security program.

The Constitution of 1950 does not expressly recognize the right to privacy. The Supreme Court first recognized in 1964 that there is a right of privacy implicit in the Constitution under Article 21 of the Constitution. In 2000 the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) urged the government to pass a data protection law to ensure the privacy of information supplied over computer networks and to meet European data protection standards.

The Consumer Protection Act 1986.

In May of 2000, the government passed the Information Technology Act, a set of laws intended to provide a comprehensive regulatory environment for electronic commerce.

Section 43- unauthorized access of the computer system. Section 65- against tampering of computer source documents. Section 66- against hacking Section 70- protection to the data stored in the “protected system” Section 72- against breach of confidentiality and privacy of the data.

In June 28, 2006, close to £233,000 (approximately Rs 1.8 crore) appears to have been siphoned off the accounts of around 20 customers from the HSBC Electronic Data Processing India centre in Bangalore.