Once again, our conscience has been shaken. Once again, a person has become a victim of online dating. This time, it’s more problematic since Shraddha has been living with her killer for 3 years. This literally begs the question of whether the online dating world is so biased towards showing only one face of multi-faceted humans. If yes, what are our laws doing about it?
Right to privacy guides dating apps
The answer is a bit vague. To start with, one will be disappointed to know that there is no specific law guiding the rules and regulations of dating apps in India. Instead, most legal provisions are directed towards punishing the perpetrator after he or she is finished with the job. Moreover, the rules and regulations guiding dating apps in India are a bit loose and subject to liberal interpretation in favour of the perpetrator.
The philosophy behind regulating dating apps emerges from the “Right to privacy” under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. In the Justice KS Puttaswamy (Retd.) v Union of India judgement, the Honorable SC said that the right to be forgotten is an implicit part of the right to privacy. It implies that people can order their information to be taken down from dating sites. In addition, it also means that people have the right to keep their information private.
IT rules on dating apps
That is where the IT rules come in conflict with it. Information Technology (Reasonable security practises and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 (Privacy Rules) enable the right to privacy but only in cases of sensitive information like credit and debit cards, biometric information, passwords, health information, medical records and history, and sexual orientation.
For other kinds of information, such as age, gender, religion, and political affiliation, among others, dating apps are not even required to classify them as sensitive information. That is why you see apps like Bumble, where Shraddha met Aftab, asking you to answer these questions. You get only those matches whose profiles are in line with the answer you provided.
Authenticity is a casualty
There is a problem here, and that is authenticity. These dating apps have absolutely no compulsion to have a KYC mechanism in place. Certainly, you may say that few apps ask you to take a selfie in a particular manner for verification. But tell me how in the world that is a verification process. Anyone can fake the identity by placing someone on the front camera. Face is not a biometric to catch anyone. For instance, in the Chandigarh University MMS leak scandal, the girl’s boyfriend was chatting with her by using someone else’s DP on social media.
What these apps lack is a proper biometric identification process. See, there is absolutely no problem with getting a selfie. Even banks and other governing bodies now use this technology. However, they have your identity cards. These identity cards, like Voter ID, Aadhar, and PAN, among others, have a direct link to your immutable biometrics.
In other words, banks use your selfie to verify your identity with documents, while dating apps use your selfie as a marker of identity. There is a very fine but significant difference between the process.
Effects of self-attestation
Verifying a face with identity cards makes it easier to ascertain the character of a person. Institutions use both identity cards and facial recognition to cross-verify with law enforcement agencies and your account is only opened after that. Contrary to it, dating apps require you to answer a few questions in order to verify your identity. They are literally self-declarations and are prone to misuse by nefarious elements.
In May this year, Noida police arrested a trio: two girls and a boy for killing their victims. Girls would create profiles on dating apps, and once the victim was enticed, they and the man would use sedatives to loot and kill them. A few years ago, a man named Dushyant Sharma was chopped into pieces by her online date and her friends. Dushyant had faked himself as a rich brat to get dates. Here again, the lack of a verification process comes into play. There are numerous such cases in the public domain.
If there had been a KYC, both sides would have been transparent.
They are not social media
The other side of the argument is that too many checks and balances could cause restrictions on burgeoning downloads. After all, the reason why Google, Facebook, Instagram, and other similar apps have millions of users is that there is self-attestation of age, sex, and other criteria. It is here that intelligible differentia comes into action.
The difference between these apps and dating apps is that these apps do not promise people the chance to meet others in person. You may meet your Facebook friend, but you cannot claim that Facebook is a site where people chat to meet. That is not the case with dating apps. Dating apps explicitly state that you talk to other individuals for meetings and later mating. But, somehow, these apps get away with the disclaimer that they are not responsible for the aftermaths of the meetings.
I mean, it’s bizarre. On one hand, they advertise themselves as matchmakers by showing real couples who met on their platform, while when it comes to taking responsibility for bad results, they just skirt away.
Not much development
The government has tried to change it, but it seems that even they are trying to understand the domain. Based on the experience of implementing privacy rules, the government did introduce the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.
It does provide some respite to victims by effectively bringing dating apps into the fold of “social media intermediary.” Rule 2(w) defines them, while Rule 2(v) classifies platforms with over 50 lakh users as “significant social media intermediary.”
There are two advantages to it. Under Rule 3, these dating apps are required to delete the private data of their former users from their surveys. The required deadline is 180 days. Additionally, Rule 4 compels these apps to trace the first originator of a particular message and hand it over to the government if and when required.
Provisions under the IT Act and IPC
These protections are over and above various protections provided under the IT Act and the Indian Penal Code. Section 66 of the IT Act protects the victims from impersonation. Similarly, Section 67, read with 67A and 67B, encompasses online obscenity and punishment for it. Strict provisions like a fine of Rs 10 lakh and 7-year punishments should act as deterrents, but they rarely do.
If the aforementioned provisions fail in any exceptional circumstance, then people have options under Sections 292, 354 (A, B, C, and D), 375, 376, 503, 509, Section 499 read with Section 500, and Section 507 of the IPC. The good thing about most of these sections is that the alleged victim is given more primacy than the alleged perpetrator.
Despite all of these, there are loopholes. On the regulatory side, there is no inclination to distinguish between affirmative consent and consent signaling. On their parts, apps shed off their hands by passing advisory. Furthermore, lack of after meeting obligations on dating apps are making Shraddha’s vulnerable to Aftabs. The fact that dating apps have no measures to check the authenticity of the person should mean that they should be responsible for after-effects of matchmaking.
There is a need for KYC verification of individuals logging on these platforms. Surely, it will take down business revenue. The flip side is that it is profitable in the long run. If tenants are subject to police verification, why not dates.
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