Data privacy is an area that I don’t see a lot of (if any) discussion in the forum.
So wanted to get answers to the following questions:
What are the various data points that Ather keeps on its users?
What PII/Sensitive information is among that?
How is the GPS information handled?
What is the retention period of the stored data?
How is this data stored? Which database, what encryption etc…
Is PII data anonymized?
Can I request a copy of my data?
Can I request my data to be deleted?
Who has access to the user data inside Ather?
What is the approval necessary for someone in Ather to access user data?
What user data is shared with Google to use maps and other APIs?
I tried looking for these in the forum but couldn’t find anything other than a line saying “We care about your privacy” which is not useful for anything.
I would also like to know about this. Ather has put out a lot of information about various topics but transparency on the privacy front is lacking. Ather has a lot of data and it can be linked to individuals with their addresses, phone numbers, names, etc. They also mentioned “Voice commands” during gen3 unveiling. Does this mean that the scooter has a mic installed or will it work via phone?
@tarun@abhishek.balaji, There certainly is an interest in the topic from people on the forum.
Not having an answer on such an important topic is concerning!
The privacy policy indeed has the information regarding data storage, and data disclosure.
But out of all the questions @Shweta asked, main question is what control do customers have on their own data. I am pointing to two specific questions here from the original post
Can user request for the data stored of his own.
Can user request to delete his data.
Third question from my understanding of the post.
Can user have the option to stop few data to not be collected. (Not the incognito mode). In terms of for example how google is giving control at least for their direct services
May be 1st question may not be 100% doable but at least some data and info of what is getting collected from some others which can’t be given or useful.
Answers to many questions can be retrieved from the privacy policy itself other than those mentioned above and its fair that they can’t give all the specifics of where how when and all bcz that is a privacy concern for company too.
No, it is not fair. As users, we have the right to know exactly what information they store about us. Although, India doesn’t have GDPR like regulations yet, a lot of companies still provide an option to download a user’s data. Ather should allow us to do that too.
Still no response. Hopefully, this does not mean that Ather employees have full access to customer data.
Tesla for example, does not store the location data for the first and last 1km of every ride to preserve customer privacy. @tarun can you please shed some light on this?