These rules suggest that big platforms with over 2 crore users in India, like shopping sites and gaming places, will have to toss out user info if they’ve been inactive for three years
Social media sites, online shops, and video games online might need to clean up the info of users who haven’t been doing much for three years. This is based on some not-yet-official rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act. Even though the law got the green light in August 2023, they’re still figuring out the details, and the government plans to talk about these rules and make them official in January 2024.
These rules suggest that big platforms with over 2 crore users in India, like shopping sites and gaming places, will have to toss out user info if they’ve been inactive for three years. But before doing that, these platforms have to tell users about it within 48 hours, saying, “Hey, if you don’t use this, we might have to clear it out.” They’ll also let users know that if they log in again, their info won’t be deleted.
This idea of cleaning up user info was talked about in a meeting on December 20 by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. People in the business asked questions about what these platforms should do if the police want the info after it’s been deleted. Also, the upcoming rules might say that any platform dealing with people’s info, whether it’s a private company or the government, has to quickly tell the Data Protection Board if there’s been a data leak. This Board is like a judge set up under the DPDP Act, and the platform needs to share details about the leak, like what happened, when they found out, where it happened, and how big the problem might be.
