Operates a social platform, in India

Information Technology Act, 2000 (No. 21 of 2000), s. 79 · Read the law's page

• Limit your role to that of an intermediary to keep the section 79(1) exemption from liability for third party information, data or communication links you make available or host: either limit your function to providing access to a communication system over which information made available by third parties is transmitted or temporarily stored or hosted, or do not initiate the transmission, do not select its receiver, and do not select or modify the information in it.
• Observe due diligence while discharging your duties under the Act, including the due diligence listed in rule 3 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, because an intermediary that fails to observe those Rules loses the section 79(1) exemption under rule 7.
• Publish the name and contact details of a Grievance Officer on your website or mobile application, together with the mechanism by which a user or victim may make a complaint, as rule 3(2)(a) of the Rules requires.
• Remove or disable access to information used to commit an unlawful act of the kinds listed in rule 3(1)(d) within three hours of a court order or of a reasoned written intimation from an authorised officer of the appropriate Government or its agency, or risk losing the exemption.
• Remove or disable access to the material expeditiously, without vitiating the evidence, once you have actual knowledge, or are notified by the appropriate Government or its agency, that information, data or a communication link on a computer resource you control is being used to commit the unlawful act, or lose the exemption.
• Do not conspire, abet, aid or induce, whether by threats or promise or otherwise, the commission of the unlawful act, or lose the exemption.

Information Technology Act, 2000 (No. 21 of 2000), s.43A; Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011 (G.S.R. 313(E), 11 April 2011), rr. 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 · Read the law's page

• This binds a body corporate that possesses, deals in, or handles the sensitive personal data or information of a person, meaning a password, a financial account or payment-instrument detail, a physical, physiological, or mental health condition, sexual orientation, a medical record or history, or biometric information, in a computer resource it owns, controls, or operates; information that is freely available in the public domain or obtainable under the Right to Information Act, 2005 is not sensitive personal data or information under these Rules.
• Implement and maintain a comprehensive, documented information security programme with managerial, technical, operational, and physical control measures commensurate with the information assets you protect and the nature of your business; certifying to the international Standard IS/ISO/IEC 27001, or to a Central-Government-approved industry code of best practice, satisfies this duty as a matter of law, provided the certification is audited by an independent, government-approved auditor at least once a year or after a significant upgrade to your process or computer resource.
• Obtain the data provider's written consent, by letter, fax, or email, before collecting their sensitive personal data or information, let them decline or withdraw that consent, publish a privacy policy on your website, and designate a Grievance Officer who must resolve a complaint within one month.
• Negligently failing to implement or maintain these practices, where it causes wrongful loss or wrongful gain to any person, exposes you to an uncapped compensation claim under section 43A of the Information Technology Act; no criminal penalty attaches to section 43A itself.
• This duty is in effect now and is repealed once section 44(2) of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 commences, currently scheduled for 13 May 2027; the DPDPA's own security-safeguards duty (section 8(5)) does not commence until the same date, so these Rules remain the operative standard until then.

Directions under section 70B(6) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, No. 20(3)/2022-CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, 28 April 2022) · Read the law's page

• Connect all your ICT systems' clocks to the Network Time Protocol server of the National Informatics Centre or the National Physical Laboratory, or to an NTP server traceable to one of them, and ensure any other time source you use does not deviate from NPL or NIC.
• Report a listed cyber security incident, including a targeted attack, a data breach, a data leak, unauthorised access to your IT systems, an attack through a malicious or fake mobile app, or an attack on, or malicious or suspicious activity affecting, an AI or machine learning system, to CERT-In within six hours of noticing it or being notified of it, by email, phone, or fax; current reporting formats and channels are published on CERT-In's own website.
• Enable logs of all your ICT systems and retain them securely, within Indian jurisdiction, on a rolling 180-day basis, and provide them to CERT-In together with an incident report or when CERT-In orders or directs you to.
• Designate a Point of Contact to interface with CERT-In, using the format CERT-In publishes, and keep that designation current.
• If your own service is itself a data centre, a virtual private server provider, a cloud service provider, a virtual private network service, or a virtual asset (crypto) service provider, a narrower and heavier duty also applies: register and retain specified customer KYC information and financial-transaction records for five years. That narrower bound-party class is not one this profile's declared activities can identify on their own, so confirm applicability directly against the text if this describes your service.
• This binds a service provider, intermediary, data centre, body corporate, or Government organisation, the Information Technology Act's own general terms for essentially any commercial or professional actor operating a computer resource in India, not a licensed or sector-specific status; a company distributing software or operating a mobile app in India falls within this reach without needing a specific regulatory registration.
• Failing to furnish information CERT-In calls for, or to comply with a direction it issues, including these Directions, is punishable under section 70B(7) of the Information Technology Act with imprisonment for up to one year, a fine of up to one lakh rupees, or both.

Rule 3(1)(b)(v), Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (G.S.R. 139(E), 25 February 2021), as substituted by G.S.R. 794(E) of 28 October 2022 and amended by G.S.R. 275(E) of 6 April 2023 · Read the law's page

• Make reasonable efforts, by yourself and by causing your users, not to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share information that deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of the message or that knowingly and intentionally communicates any misinformation or information which is patently false and untrue or misleading in nature, as rule 3(1)(b)(v) requires, because an intermediary that fails to observe the Rules loses the section 79(1) exemption under rule 7.

Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026, G.S.R. 120(E), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, notified 10 February 2026, Gazette of India Extraordinary; effective 20 February 2026; amending Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, G.S.R. 139(E), made under Information Technology Act, 2000, section 87 read with sections 69A and 79

• If you operate a social media intermediary with more than 5 million registered users in India, put technical measures in place to detect and label synthetically generated information before it is published.
• If you operate a social media intermediary with more than 5 million registered users in India, give visual synthetically generated information a clear, prominent on-screen label and tamper-resistant embedded metadata carrying a unique identifier traceable to you.
• If you operate a social media intermediary with more than 5 million registered users in India, start audio-only synthetically generated information with a spoken disclaimer.
• If you operate a platform, remove synthetically generated information declared unlawful by a court or the government within three hours of receiving the order.

Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, rule 3(3), as inserted by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026 (G.S.R. 120(E), dated 10 February 2026) · Read the law's page

• If you operate a computer resource that may enable the creation, generation, modification, alteration, publication, transmission, sharing or dissemination of synthetically generated information, prominently label such information, in the visual display or by a prefixed audio disclosure, so a viewer can immediately identify it as synthetically generated.
• Embed synthetically generated information with permanent metadata or another technical provenance mechanism, including a unique identifier, to the extent technically feasible, and do not enable removal, suppression or modification of that label or metadata.
• Deploy reasonable and appropriate technical measures, including automated tools, so that no user can create, publish or share synthetically generated information that violates the law, such as child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate imagery, a false document or electronic record, material on preparing explosives, arms or ammunition, or a deceptive depiction of a real person or event.
• Inform your users that directing or causing your computer resource to produce or spread such prohibited information may attract penalty or punishment under law, and may lead to removal of the information, suspension or termination of the user's account without vitiating the evidence, and disclosure of the user's identity to a victim who complains.
• If you run a social media platform with registered users in India above the threshold the Central Government notifies for a significant social media intermediary, require each user to declare, before display, whether information is synthetically generated, verify the declaration with appropriate technical measures, and label information confirmed as synthetic.

Draft Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Amendment) Rules, 2026, notification S.O. 3962(E), rule 2 (proposed rule 15(1)(c)) · Read the law's page

• This is a draft published for comments: it binds no one until the Central Government makes the final rules, which come into force on their publication in the Official Gazette (draft rule 1(2)).
• If you make websites, apps, software, digital content or electronic documents, or an information and communication technology based service, available to persons in India, make them comply with IS 17802 (Part 1): 2021 and IS 17802 (Part 2): 2022 and with any accessibility requirements your sectoral regulator notifies (proposed rule 15(1)(c)(B) and (C)).
• Meet the clauses of IS 17802 (Part 1) listed in Schedule I for websites, apps, digital content and services within one year of publication of the final rules if your turnover is five hundred crore rupees or more, and within eighteen months otherwise; Schedule II sets the same periods for hardware and consumer products (proposed rule 15(1)(c)(E)(1) and (2)).
• Comply with the standards in their entirety within two years of publication of the final rules (proposed rule 15(1)(c)(E)(4)); archived content clearly identified as archived is exempt from the scheduled timelines (clause (E)(2), Exception).
• Publish an Accessibility Conformance Report for each item on your website or app, in human-readable and machine-readable formats, and re-test and update it before deploying a major change and at least once every two years (proposed rule 15(1)(c)(D)).
• If you run a platform for user-generated content, give users the capability to embed captions, transcripts, alternative text, audio description and accessible formats, adding any missing capability within six months of notification (proposed rule 15(1)(c)(D)(6), Explanation).
• Designate a senior officer from your management as Grievance Redressal Officer and redress accessibility complaints within thirty days (proposed rule 15(1)(c)(H)(1) and (5)).