BJP MP asks government to implement a ban on Gmail, Yahoo for private citizens to secure data.
The Indian government has already banned third party email servers Gmail and Yahoo in government offices, stating security concerns. Now, BJP MP Tarun Vijay has urged the government to declare these sites untrustworthy and ban them for private citizens as well.
Speaking during the zero hour in Parliament, Tarun Vijay asked, "If use of these mail services, who park all their data in foreign lands, is not good for government officials, how can it be good for the common citizens?"
"There are many reports of espionage in Indian government offices, but what about the data we are ourselves providing willingly to these agencies," the BJP MP asked, demanding that the government provide better Indian email service alternatives to common Indians.
BJP has already filed two complaints against Google for its Mapathon activities and major defence installations are there on Google Earth with identified places, which is never allowed by US or China. Taurn Vijay also urged the government to strengthen NIC and Survey of India and provide a more effective alternative to Google Earth.
He further added that government should also impose a ban on use of social media sites in offices too. Even personal emails shouldn't be allowed on Gmail, Yahoo and such foreign-based email service providers, he said, adding, "These email services should be declared 'untrustworthy' for common citizens also."
The Indian government had banned use of third party email services like Gmail, Yahoo!, Microsoft Live etc., and has asked officials to use NIC email servers for government communication under the new ‘E-mail Policy of Government of India’. Under the policy over five million officials will use the governments secure email, by the end of the fiscal year.
The government decided to implement the change due to the frequent security breaches on the email servers as well as the recent 5 million Gmail username and password leak that happened in September.
Source: TOI
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Silky Malhotra
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