Data Protection Laws of India

In the recent years India has emerged as one of the preferred destinations for offshore business outsourcing. Financial services, educational services, legal services, banking services, healthcare services, marketing services and telecommunication services . The factors that have turned India into one of the hotspots for offshore outsourcing are the educated and unemployed masses, enterprising nature of Indians who have excellent spoken English skills and relatively cheap labour.

In June 2005, one BPO was in the eye of the storm when one of its employees sold personal data belonging to a large number of British nationals to an undercover reporter from the British tabloid ‘The Sun'. The incident sparked off a debate among the offshore industry circles, media and the legal world as to how safe foreign data is in Indian hands. The discussions were also veered towards the need for some kind of protection for personal data in India which is absent currently.

Data Protection Issues have time and again raised concern in the authorities about the cyber extortion, privacy, confidentiality, data protection and national security. With the increasing penetration in the online usage of more and more people towards internet, e-banking, e-shopping etc. the concerns of data protection and related issues are growing day by day.

Privacy is closely connected to Data Protection. An individual's data like his name address, telephone numbers, profession, family, choices, etc. are often...