The Union Government has been asked by the Delhi High Court on April 25, 2013, to explain how minors who are under 18 years of age are being allowed to open accounts on social networking sites like Facebook and Google. The Centre has been asked to respond within ten days, by a division bench of Justices B.D Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru.
The petition has been filed by BJP Leader KN Govindacharya, who has accused the sites of not verifying the details of the subscribers. The matter was posted on May 13, 2013 for further hearing. The bench has made Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. parties in the case and has also issued notices to them.
The Indian subsidiaries have also responded to the petition. Virag Gupta, the lawyer of the petitioner earlier said that the agreements which are entered into by minors were against the Indian Majority Act, The Information technology act and the Indian Contract Act. In the month of June 2012, Facebook had filed a statement before US Securities and Exchange Commission, which said that more than eight crore of its registered users have given false identities. This number might have further increased since.
The petitioner has also raised the issue of privacy of the users on these sites, as the data was being transferred to the US for commercial use.
