NOIDA: Uttar Pradesh may soon become the first state to protect data of its citizens by asking top data companies including Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Whatsapp, Flipkart to store data of state users within the state.
The government has asked these companies to store all the data of users from the state within a proposed data centre, which is likely to come up in Noida.
The Yogi government is in talks with Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, WhatsApp, Flipkart to set up data centres within the state.
According to an official, the state government has asked these companies to store data within the state to preempt any misuse of the data.
The government has also recently drafted a Data Centre policy on the basis of similar policies implemented by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Once these companies agree to the government’s proposal of not moving data of Uttar Pradesh users outside the state, users from UP will not have to worry about their data being accessed by people outside the state.
A data center is a large group of networked computer servers used by institutions for storing, processing, or distributing large amounts of data. The proposal also intends to set up a 500 MW data center and solar park across several acres of land in Noida. There are about 40 million people in the state that use social media sites.
The policy will also target to create more than 75 thousand direct and indirect jobs in the state.