What do consent, control and privacy mean in today’s world? How can data protection law be applied to data from the past to help achieve these ideals? The paper begins by contextualising the role of consent and privacy in today’s world of technological and analytical capabilities. The author sees consent as the ability to exercise control, autonomy, and free will to manoeuvre in the world. The author sees the possibility of integrating this idea in India's data protection discourse by applying India’s data protection law to the ongoing processing of data from the past before the law comes into force. A comparison is made with the position of application to data from the past when the EU GDPR came into force. Ultimately, the author contemplates significant questions about consent, control and privacy in the changing nature of the world.