-The Hindu Overregulation risks retarding growth and job creation in the e-commerce sector  Barely 11 months after the Government notified the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, the Department of Consumer Affairs has mooted a set of sweeping amendments, ostensibly “to protect the interests of consumers... and encourage free and fair competition in the market”. Among them is a norm stipulating the appointment of a chief compliance officer, a nodal contact person for...

-TheNewsMinute.com There have been cases of people saying that their KYC details, which were shared with the Chinese loan apps, were used to open bank and crypto exchange accounts in their names, without consent. Shonali*, a 48-year-old lecturer from West Bengal was laid off from a private university in March 2020. The lecturer, facing financial stress, turned to Chinese-owned instant loan applications that provide microloans without collateral, but at high-interest rates. Shonali...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The next time you queue up at the ATM for cash—an experience that has become increasingly onerous since demonetisation— it’s not just the long wait that should worry you. There’s a high probability the cash dispenser runs on software Microsoft stopped supporting more than two years back, thus making it vulnerable to hackers. Card details could be stolen—as they indeed were earlier this year--even as you...

-Hindustan Times U-turns on net neutrality, porn ban and now the draft encryption policy. This is the third time in as many months that the Centre has had to take a step back in the face of a strong public outcry against ‘draft policies’ relating to technology and the digital consumer. For a government that is committed to a Digital India and transformative powers of technology, the series of missteps point to...

Draft rules proposed by the Indian government for intermediaries such as telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and blogging sites could in effect aid censorship, according to experts. Under the draft rules, intermediaries will have to notify users of their services not to use, display, upload, publish, share or store a variety of content, for which the definition is very vague, and liable to misuse. Content that is prohibited under these guidelines ranges...