Consent under DPDP: what your forms must change
Pre-ticked boxes, bundled agreements, and walls of text all fail the DPDP Act's consent test. What valid consent looks like on a real signup and checkout form.
- Who this is for
- Whoever owns your forms
- What you leave with
- Six form patterns fixed, with the section behind each
Section 6 of the DPDP Act sets a high bar: consent must be free, specific, informed, unconditional, and unambiguous, given by a clear affirmative action, and limited to the data necessary for the stated purpose. Most Indian forms today fail at least one of those. Here is what passing looks like, pattern by pattern.
Kill the pre-ticked box
A pre-ticked box is not an affirmative action - it is your action, not the customer's. Every optional purpose (marketing, profiling, sharing with partners) needs its own unticked choice.
Unbundle the agreement
One checkbox that accepts the terms, the privacy policy, and marketing together makes the consent conditional and unspecific - two failures at once. Keep contract acceptance and data consent apart, and never make marketing consent a condition of buying.
Ask only for what the purpose needs
Consent is valid only for data necessary to the purpose. A newsletter needs an email - not a date of birth and a pincode. Every extra field either needs its own purpose or needs to go.
Put the notice before the ask
The Section 5 notice comes before or with the consent request - a link right at the form, in understandable language, itemising data and purposes. A notice buried three clicks deep protects nobody, including you.
Make withdrawal one step
Section 6(4) is blunt: withdrawing must be as easy as giving. If subscribing was one tap, unsubscribing cannot be an email to support with a reason attached. Build the setting, link it from the notice, and actually stop the processing when it is used.
Keep the record
When a regulator or customer asks, you will want to show who consented, when, and to what. Store the consent event alongside the account - it is the difference between an answer and an argument.
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