India Telecom Regulator: Users Have Primary Data Rights

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has advised stricter rules around data protection and taken a stance on users' information control: The institutions that collect and handle personal data do not have primary rights over that data, it reports.

The country's telecom regulator also says its current framework for securing data is not up to par, according to a new report from Reuters. TRAI has requested the Indian government build a policy framework to regulate devices, browsers, operating systems, applications, and other technologies that collect and process user data.

In addition, it has recommended a study to create standards to de-identify personal data collected by connected devices, maintaining that organizations don't have primary control over it. "All entities in the digital eco-system, which control or process the data, should be restrained from using metadata to identify the individual users," TRAI says in a statement.

TRAI's news arrives shortly after the arrival of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the privacy guidelines forcing businesses to buckle down on privacy rights and pay closer attention to how they collect, store, and process the information of European users. While it only applies to data of EU citizens, GDPR is causing other entities to re-evaluate how they handle personal data.

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