Look who’s calling? In the digital age, Indians need a ‘right to know the contactor’

If someone deliberately conceals or falsifies their identity while initiating contact, only a limited number of explanations are plausible. They may be a scammer or other malicious actor. They may be a government agent conducting lawful surveillance or an intelligence operative acting on behalf of a foreign state. Or they may fear that revealing their identity could expose them to harassment, discrimination, retaliation, or personal harm. Some people may even conceal their identity merely for amusement, although they would reveal it if asked. Yet, the recipient has no reliable mechanism to verify whether that disclosure is genuine.

Privacy and anonymity, often treated as synonymous, are fundamentally different concepts. Every individual has the right not to initiate communication and the right to refuse communication. However, once someone chooses to seek another person’s attention, trust, money, cooperation, or personal information, the ethical balance changes. At that point, the recipient acquires an equally important right — the right to know who is making the approach.

Cybersecurity is a competition of capabilities between criminals and law enforcement, attackers and defenders, deception and detection. While a small minority possess the digital literacy to recognise sophisticated scams, millions of ordinary users do not. Children, older adults, first-time internet users, and those with limited digital education often trust by default. This creates a dangerous information imbalance: the sender knows exactly who they are, while the receiver knows almost nothing. Exploiting this asymmetry, cybercriminals operating behind anonymous identities have built a global underground economy.

The consequences extend far beyond individual victims. Repeated deception gradually erodes trust in digital communication itself, making people suspicious of legitimate businesses, charities, researchers, and public institutions. Anonymous identities also amplify misinformation. The challenge is not merely technological but institutional. Digital platforms often prioritise frictionless growth, while governments must balance public safety, civil liberties, and national security. Advances in digital identity technologies now make it increasingly feasible to authenticate identities without enabling pervasive surveillance. The objective should not be universal monitoring, but universal authenticity.

The right to know the contactor would simply affirm that whenever someone voluntarily initiates communication through any medium, the recipient should have access to reliable information about the sender’s authentic identity, subject only to narrowly defined legal exceptions. Such a principle would not eliminate crime — no right ever has — but it could substantially reduce opportunities for deception, fraud, impersonation, manipulation, and abuse. More importantly, it could restore trust.

A truly civilised society is not one in which people become increasingly suspicious of everyone they encounter. It is one in which honesty becomes the default expectation rather than the exception. Perhaps the next great milestone in digital civilisation will not be faster networks, more powerful artificial intelligence, or larger data centres. Perhaps it will be something far simpler: A world in which every person possesses the basic right to know who is contacting them.

The question is no longer whether humanity can build such a system. The more important question is whether humanity is ready to recognise this as a universal right.

The writer is DIG Cybercrime Uttar Pradesh. Views are personal