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Indian government banned Gmail and Yahoo Mail in offices

Written by Punit

Use of private e-mail networks like Gmail and Yahoo has now also been officially banned for all government use. The main aim of this move to safeguard critical and sensitive government data which is more likely to fall in the hands of the wrong people if proper encryption of email services is not implemented.

The prime minister of India Narendra Modi, government issued two email notifications earlier this month to all its officials, stating the ban of Gmail, Yahoo and other third-party email services. The notification asserted that only National Informatics Centre (NIC) email services need to be used for all communications, while also stating that the government can monitor their online activities and delete history and past emails, upon intimation to the user.

As per DEITY Secretary J Satyanarayana

E-mail policy of the government of India, as this policy will be called, is almost ready and we are taking views from other ministries on this. Our effort will be to operationalise it by mid or end-December.

 

This will also include integrating the e-mails with cloud so that official data can be saved on a cloud platform, which can then be easily shared with the concerned government ministries and departments.

The government has even decided to make social media access to officials limited and keep it under high security settings. The notification tells officials clearly not to not post “offensive, threatening, defamatory, bullying, racist, hateful, harassing, obscene or sexist” dialogues on Twitter or Facebook. They are asked not to post any comment that would “cause damage to the organisation’s reputation.”

About the author

Punit

Professionally a Flash Action Script 3.0 and Mobile App Developer. Tech and Gadget addict by interest.

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