Data Bill may give govt power to lower the age of consent

Bengaluru & New Delhi: The government may get power to lower the age restriction for users who can give consent under the proposed digital personal data protection law to as low as 14 years, shows a draft of the Bill seen by ET.

But in such cases, the company that is seeking consent for processing children’s data must demonstrate that it uses the information in a “verifiably safe” manner, shows the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, seen by ET. An earlier draft released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology last November had proposed 18 years as the minimum age for giving such consent and mandated that data of children below this age should be used only with explicit parental consent.