Children will need adult consent to open social media accounts: Govt proposes new draft rules for data protection

The adult in this case can be either a parent or a guardian, the draft rules say.

The Centre released the draft rules on Friday and sought public opinion and suggestions on the matter.

The public feedback can be submitted on mygov.in and the draft rules will be taken into consideration after February 18, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said in a notification on Friday.

The consent given to a child for opening social media accounts needs to be "verifiable", the rules say, adding processing of personal data of a child or a person with disability will happen only with the "verifiable" consent.

"A data fiduciary shall adopt appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure that verifiable consent of the parent is obtained before the processing of any personal data of a child and shall observe due diligence, for checking that the individual identifying herself as the parent is an adult who is identifiable if required in connection with compliance with any law for the time being in force in India...," the draft rules say.

Some of the salient features of the draft rules include greater consumer control over data; users' demand for deletion of their data and that companies should be more transparent with personal data.

The draft also provides for consumers' right to ask the reason why their data is being collected, and a huge penalty of up to Rs 250 crore for data breach.