Indian government to ban US based email services for official communications.

Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication

The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication, a move intended to increase security of confidential government information after revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US.

A senior official in the ministry of communications and information technology said the government plans to send a formal notification to nearly 5 lakh employees barring them from email service providers such as Gmail that have their servers in the US, and instead asking them to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology.

Source : Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication - The Times of India

Makes sense?

Yes , as long as they provide a better or similiar alternative.

Aren't these servers encrypted

T

Finally some sense prevailed. They should not have allowed an outside private company with the ability to access official/govt communication in the first place. Don't ask how Gmail has access to each users' emails.

Govt shoud have their own domain ,why depend on american or chinese

good idea,why risk sensitive govt info by using foreign private firms but they should have a more secure indian service

govt were using gmail for official purpose

thats laughable ....even our 10 cr small company have its own email service for its employees

sujoyp said:
govt were using gmail for official purpose thats laughable ....even our 10 cr small company have its own email service for its employees

Yeah . Shameful too.

Why can't they monitor the mails that was sent/received from govt offices?

because most of the ministers are busy making money, even IT minster also dont know any thing about technology, so they never thought of modeernising the communication structure in govternment offices,

shame you government, why not using talendted mind in india,

Why were they using it in the first place.

A

Gearbox said:
Why can't they monitor the mails that was sent/received from govt offices?

??? monitor gmail??

I never knew that some government officials used Gmail for official business. This is the single most stupidest lapse in security.

Those working in IT companies will know the importance of an official email address.

IMHO, it doesn't matter how good an alternative official mail service is as long as it is private and secure.

arijitsinha said:
??? monitor gmail??

IT companies do it.
If you send any confidential information via your personal mail (any mail), you will be tracked and be taken with disciplinary action.

I've seen people get terminated, just because they of this.

Scenario: Official mail IDs have limitations of email attachment size (say 5MB). So, people unknowingly use personal mails (without knowing the security policies of the company) to send these huge docs across their machine and to the client machine.

A

Gearbox said:
IT companies do it.
If you send any confidential information via your personal mail (any mail), you will be tracked and be taken with disciplinary action.

I've seen people get terminated, just because they of this.

Scenario: Official mail IDs have limitations of email attachment size (say 5MB). So, people unknowingly use personal mails (without knowing the security policies of the company) to send these huge docs across their machine and to the client machine.

You cannot track this unless either the sender or reciever is company's email id. There is no way they can track gmail-gmail mail transfer.

if you have a gmail account...then forget about privacy...all our mails and conversations are scanned by google

thats why I switched to outlook.com. and pretty much satisfied. much better then gmail IMO.

abhidev said:
if you have a gmail account...then forget about privacy...all our mails and conversations are scanned by google

+1 to this buddy :-D

vijju6091 said:
thats why I switched to outlook.com. and pretty much satisfied. much better then gmail IMO.

And who owns outlook? Microsoft... Do not forget what German's had found out..about windows 8

sujoyp said:
govt were using gmail for official purpose thats laughable ....even our 10 cr small company have its own email service for its employees

It's mms na re...
And kapil sibal n m tiwari ..

Privacy is a delusion. Don't prevail in real world.

I will say its a good move (if used only for official purpose)
Government should use own hosted and India based server.

Indian hosted servers will also be much faster.

S

I also suggest using Indian Based Dedicated servers for Indian Websites and Emails. Now a Days domains and host link are costing Less then Car maintenance per Year ... they should Use india.gov site as Email and hosting and available to all Govt employes in work requiring Mails and others stuff .

Also To note !! - Don't use BlackBerry , Iphone or Other mail push servers for mail Clients , They have PUSH mail service which also is great threat.

India is capable of making blackberry Push Servers by taking Help of CDAC , IIT or other institutes !!!

S

theterminator said:
Finally some sense prevailed. They should not have allowed an outside private company with the ability to access official/govt communication in the first place. Don't ask how Gmail has access to each users' emails.

DeSmOnD dAvId said:
Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication

Source : Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication - The Times of India

Makes sense?

I support this move. Since after PRISM, we cannot trust foreign companies to handle government officials reports.

T

for all who think that just using non-google services will get them rid of privacy intrusion, well think again... govt/companies don't give a damn about your privacy...
for the record, GMAIL "reads" each & every one of your email. That's why they can filter out Spam, Categorize your emails into Tabs, mark yellow the Important ones . Yahoo & Microsoft also read your email. It's always a computer reading those emails but nevertheless, its scary.
google is doing very good in terms of letting us know what they are taking , read their privacy policy, account activity reports... on the other hand Microsoft , who comes up Scroogle ads , are giving away your data happily.. Companies based in USA are the biggest worry now that we know about the PRISM program. US Govt issues these companies what is called "National Security Letter" which literally slits their throats . They are not even allowed to say that "We have received requests for data from the Government". This snooping must have been known in political quarters in which case it's not surprising to see the delay in our Govt's decision making.
One should always clear the cache/cookies n all to have some degree of protection but its not the solution. Tor or services alike provide some damn good degree of protection/privacy. Anyways, as takemein above said: "Privacy is a delusion. Don't prevail in real world":

*i.imgur.com/wo72y81.jpg

sijugk said:
I support this move. Since after PRISM, we cannot trust foreign companies to handle government officials reports.

Who is the idiot government official who uses Gmail for official purposes?

Incredible India :clap2: