Spammers, Beware: Sharing Customers Email IDs Will Be Punishable Offense, Very Soon!

The rise of Digital India & e-commerce is indeed fascinating; record breaking festive sales via e-commerce portals is indeed encouraging.

However, along with this, comes the unavoidable evil: Spamming.

Reputed and established e-commerce portals, digital services have been caught sharing their consumer’s private data without consent, and the problem is indeed real.

Govt. of India has taken note of this problem, and very soon, spamming would be a punishable offense.

Spammers, beware!

Spamming To Be Soon Covered Under Consumer Protection

Recently,  Secretary General of UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Mukhisa Kituyi met with PM Modi, and raised the demand for protection of consumer’s private data, especially for e-commerce and digital customers.

Govt. has supported the move, and a reformed Consumer Protection Bill would be tabled in the Parliament, which will make spamming a punishable offense.

In simple terms, no business – online or offline would be allowed to share their customer’s private data such as email ids and phone number, without their consent.

If we believe reports, then the new, and reformed bill for protecting consumer’s right would be passed in the Winter session of Parliament.

Consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan said,

“Every country from the South East Asia region shared the best practices and the growing areas of concern to protect consumers. We are hopeful of the bill getting passed in the winter session. What we have learnt from other countries will get reflected in our policies,”

An unnamed Govt. official has admitted that crusaders of privacy and consumer right activists have been pushing for a major reform in this aspect, especially now as more and more users are using their net banking, mobile wallets and other means of cashless alternatives for making payments, and shopping.

The data is out there, and some companies are unethically exploiting it since long.

Very soon, Central Consumer Protection Authority would be empowered with regulations regarding protecting Internet users’ complaints, and spamming would be made an offense.

Complaints Against Spamming At An All Time High

In the popular India sub-reddit, several users have complained about spamming, that too from reputed companies.

Few days back, a user claimed that Paytm is selling their users’ database to spammers, and this is the worst example of them all, because Paytm is also India’s largest mobile wallet.

Similar complaints have been exposed against Flipkart as well, in the past; besides several Internet based services.

In US and other Western countries, there exists robust rules against spamming, and something similar was much needed in India.

Kudos to the Govt. for finally taking some steps towards this. We will keep you updated.