Indian PMO Uses Free Hotmail Email Account For Official Communications

We've always had a problem with the way Indian Government Websites have been designed. We may ignore the asthetics, but when it comes to security of information and data, should Indian Government rely on free email addresses provided by popular email service providers like Microsoft Hotmail, Google Gmail or Yahoo! Inc.? We think a big 'NO'. TOI #-Link-Snipped-# that after recent serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, Indian PMO issued official statement condemning the terrorist attacks - via Hotmail email address. TOI notices that many government officials use free email IDs provided by Rediffmail, Hotmail, Google and Yahoo and also mention them on their business cards.

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Original Image: AP | Unwanted Creativity By : CrazyEngineers

Indian cyber security experts believe that using free email accounts puts a question on the authenticity of the communication received from Indian Government officials. Pawan Duggal, a New Delhi based lawyer who specializes in Information Technology Security related cases in Supreme Court says, "It's a recipe for disaster. It's really quite amazing that, as a nation, we haven't yet woken up to the idea that sensitive government information should be shared through secure channels, not Hotmail or Yahoo."

Not just the PMO, but Ministry Of Commerce uses Gmail account to send market moving inflation related information and data. Indian Air Force uses Gmail to send the updates on competitive bidding for an $11 billion combat-jet program. It seems that the Government directives are not being followed by the officials. Siba Charan Pradhan, in-charge of messaging systems & security at NIC says that they created over 300k 'official email accounts' for over 3.1m federal employees. IDI has issued a directive that all government officials must use email accounts hosted on servers controlled by Government.

India is known in the world for the progress in IT, but it seems that IT's far from adoption by the Government officials. We ask our readers their opinion on this.