[SJM1214]

The policy states that organisations can purchase the data for one calendar year at any time. They will receive the same in four data dumps for each year of the purchase of data.

On March 8, the government approved a Bulk Data Sharing policy, enabling it to monetise a database of vehicle registration certificates, citing benefits to the “transport and automobile industry”, even as the issue of privacy and data protection looms large over such sharing

The ministry of road transport and highways collects and holds data as part of the issuance of vehicle registration certificates (RC) and driver licenses (DL). According to the ministry, at present, the data is shared with specified law enforcement agencies and in addition, data is also shared with automobile industries, banks, finance companies etc., at specified rates for each data set.

According to the policy cleared, organisations requesting the data should be registered in India and be majority (at least 50%) owned by an Indian resident or company

Hindustantimes News

[saket77]

Now lets get ready for more pesky calls like "sir, your Swift is already 7 years old. Please get a loan from us and buy a sedan. We shall be at your home in the evening when you return from your office!" This is apart from the calls by insurers, aggregators, and other good & bad finance companies.

I will be wary if someone shares my details like name, address, car reg no, phone numbers, email, etc and more so if that's the Govt itself!

Registering a vehicle is not 'optional'. I register my vehicle to be on the right side of the law. Not to throw my privacy out of the window. I know that there is certain loss of privacy in this age of social media but if Govt agencies come down to sell my data and do 'business', I wonder what does it take to stop them.

A small analysis can bring out a lot of data. Eg. you can draw your conclusions about my financial status if you see a Nano or a Jetta against my name. Now imagine what people of different sorts can do with my address, phone number, email, and I really hope not- my date of birth.

This is not done. This is worse than Facebook.

[rovingeye]

Originally Posted by saket77

This is not done. This is worse than Facebook.

Absolutely agree!! With the EU getting serious about privacy of citizens through their GDPR regulation, this is like a step backward for Indians where the govt. is selling out its citizen's private data.

Winners - Govt. (direct beneficiary) and True Caller (increased pesky call volume handling translating into higher Ad revenue).

[xcentrk]

Privacy is a joke in India and this proves it further. But with lot of events happening lately it is not surprising to see. What next? They will share our Aadhar Number and PAN to thrid party services? God save us.

As a person who doesn't use TrueCaller, I think I suffered enough already. This is going to make it worse!

Just for the information, Is there anything we can do about it? If we file petition will it be reverted?

[tarik.arora]

I don't think much has changed, they are just streamlining the way in which data is sold.
As per my knowledge the RTO data was already being sold to different agencies. In my previous role with an Auto OEM, we used to buy RTO data through different vendors in different states. I think the government is just getting the middle men out of the way and will supply data on its own and in a more organised format.

Amongst the complete data, what particular data points will be sold is a question now. What we used to buy was: brand, model, variant, color, RTO office (city/town/state etc.). We never got hold of personal details like name, address etc. I hope that the government is not looking to sell all data points, it will be an attack on our privacy!

[indian21r]

This is such a regressive step.

If the government itself is willing to throw its citizens privacy under the bus what is stopping others from doing the same. Who is going to monitor what is shared.

What next
-Aadhar
-Passport
-Driving license

Well the list is really long with all the cards issued by them.

Even fastag/wallets etc, I am skeptical to use as they seem to know all my patterns of driving/shopping. As long as data is used to identify trends without any personal information it is acceptable. But lack of proper data privacy laws makes it a huge gamble. Data is subject to unknown risks

[saket77]

Originally Posted by tarik.arora

Amongst the complete data, what particular data points will be sold is a question now. What we used to buy was: brand, model, variant, color, RTO office (city/town/state etc.). We never got hold of personal details like name, address etc. I hope that the government is not looking to sell all data points, it will be an attack on our privacy!

There are 28 fields of data which will be shared, as per the report. Those 28 fields don't have name field. But by using Vahan app or parivahan website, your name & address can be easily fetched. If the backend data of these websites are also 'sold', then so much easier for them.

[SJM1214]

Originally Posted by SJM1214

The policy states that organisations can purchase the data for one calendar year at any time. They will receive the same in four data dumps for each year of the purchase of data.

Some more details on this Policy.

The Ministry of Road Transport (MoRTH) and Highways have released a Bulk Data Sharing Policy & Procedure in which it states who can buy bulk vehicle data of Registration Certificates (RCs) and Driving Licenses (DLs), what it can do with it and how much the data will cost. MoRTH says that it shares data with enforcement agencies, automobile industries, banks, finance companies etc at specified rates for each data set.

Detailed Article.

[libranof1987]

Anyone under the impression that all this data was not already being sold is living in fool's paradise! What looks like will happen now is, the Govt. has realized the potential (financial) value this data has and decided to have it for themselves. So, instead of small guys (banks, dealerships, Insurance companies) monetizing our data, the Govt. has taken control of the pie. Sad that instead of formulating policies protecting consumer data, they've in turn legalized the sale of it.

[GTO]

What a regressive move . The government should NOT get into the business of selling data. It has bigger fish to fry. If this move has to go through, it should be without the registration number (hence, the privacy of car owners is maintained).

The single upside of this will be that we can finally have details on retail sales of cars. Till now, our sales threads have included only factory dispatch numbers. These will give us the real-world scenario.

[dark.knight]

Marketing is passe now, with the arrival of internet, smartphones, data-banks and KYC (which all dealers, agencies etc collect gleefully under the pretext of getting to know you better), the new way of trying to push for sales is personal marketing. Once they know when the insurance of the vehicle is going to expire or once they get to know even more private details like claiming insurance, or diesel vehicle crossing 9 years, the world is their oyster as they can push across ads for buying new vehicles, new policies, detailing/repair vendors etc.

Technology is only bringing the nanny-state upon us, and 99.99% of the public are embracing it happily and more than willingly. Even with DND I get promotional messages, this is trojan marketing at its finest.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by libranof1987

... instead of formulating policies protecting consumer data, they've in turn legalized the sale of it.

That is the worst part. It's no secret our data is being sold down the river by every data aggregator out there, and most of us write that off as a cost of convenience for the services we get in exchange.

That the largest one of them all, and one we would like to think is supposed to protect us from the downsides of data theft, has instead decided to monetize it is a real bummer.

It's RTO records today, what will it be tomorrow?

[rajeshsundaram]

This proves that privacy is a joke. Sounds creepy too.



What was a shady practice earlier is, will be a legal practice now. Soon, I will get calls with more focused marketing pitch and even details that I dont even know. Sorry state.

[superbad]

Wth
So we pay lakhs of rupees to the government to give them our data, they in turn can sell it for crores to any agency which technical fulfills the criteria. Civil words are inadequate to express my feelings. A supreme court filled PIL is the only way out.

[Carpainter]

Not only the policy itself is hilarious, the criteria need to be fulfilled to buy these data is like a daylight robbery. Question is can the Govt. really do this. Don't we as citizen have the right to privacy at all? I'm not a lawyer and I don't have detailed idea about the Constitution, but is there no legal way to stop this. Otherwise, this will result in complete loss of data privacy because this is not just related to car registration or insurance details, this will open up our whole personal details to any person or organization operating in our country. They will know our name, whom we are banking with, our id numbers, our addresses and what not. This will simply become a hackers' paradise. God bless our policy makers. They can do anything for money.