Indian email accounts for Indian nationals

IT.com

Ceres

New Member
When amendments to India's IT Act come into force, companies that provide free email accounts (eg Google, Rediff and Microsoft) will be required to:

- set up Indian servers; and
- provide Indian email accounts for Indian nationals.

The purpose of these requirements is to help India during its investigations of cyber crime.

This will have far-reaching ramifications for the millions of users of Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoomail in India.
Internet users will have email accounts ending with ?.in? instead of ?.com?. While some like Yahoo already provide email services with this suffix, many others offer the global suffix ?.com?.
The question is, will global email providers agree to the idea of hosting servers in India to service their Indian client base?
I wonder how willingly these companies will take such steps to assist in cyber crime investigations?
 
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Strange and ineffective I would think.

*I'm sure anyone who really wanted to will still be able to get non .in free email.

*Sounds like legislation that was paid for by hosts in India - they'll rake in a lot more money

* I can't imagine it will have any effect on terrorism whatsoever
 
dude its good news for people like me.
1>i can setup servers for companies and hosting providers in local areas and make some big bucks.
2>the indian economy will boom with the lot of cash in these times. just getting richer by the day xD
3>mail providers will be bound to listen to indian legislation or their ip can be banned.. really i have seen sify banning many sites in my presence and i had to use vsnl to connect to it before vsnl also banned it and im using proxy now.
4>the terrorists arent so stupid to make ids with indian e-mail providers only, they may use outsiders but there could be exception that outside mails will be blocked and not reach inbox of indian people when isp starts blocking them... so i think this would be really effective upto some extent.

what you think?
 
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#1 is probably true - go for it :D

#3 is probably true too - but not necessarily good and open to lots of abuse and corruption.
 
It's not the first time the Indian government has made this kind of move. Last year, it threatened to shutdown Blackberry services in India if RIM did not agree to users' emails being monitored. Many months later, in September 2008, it was reported that the Indian government is now able to track emails sent from Blackberry devices...

While I certainly have nothing to hide, the thought of any government tracking my emails is very unsettling.

With regard to the latest move by the Indian government, are they going to block all non .IN email accounts??? :confused: If so, wouldn't this have an adverse effect on India's global integration?
 
these guys dont have any work at home to do, so they do all this. dont they know how much it costs to start a surveillance agency like mi5 of uk or secret service of usa? it just uses resources, electricity, money and there is no big or good outcome, if some bad guy wants to kill you then he will be able to kill you no matter how much surveilance you have in hand. as there is always loop hole in every system you invent and this is what all bad guys are already aware of. if the govt makes an act on giving the same amount of funds to arrange education, living and 2 meals a day for poor people would be a better policy than this. but they arent interested in doing anything constructive. just they got the money to spend in useless activities. man!
 
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Well whether this happens or not, but we come across these things daily and sometimes we overlook, ignore, or don't realise them at all... so why are we scared and for what. this is something similar to -

1) your corporate emails are tracked and stored (or by law for 5-10 years at least depending on which country you reside) by your company
2) your web traffic is monitored by your company
3) your movements are monitored by the surveillance camera's, whether you are in public transport, walking down the road, google street maps(there is nothing wrong according to the district courts in the USA - lots of them here), the list goes on...
4) phones(including some latest VoIP providers) are tapped (whether you have been told or not) by the government departments. Once somebody is caught/exposed then the officials will say this person was under surveillance for so and so long ;-)
5) free public email providers do keep record of your emails too
6) every country has an internet gateway and they keep track of your browing history too
7) every ISP keep track of your downloads including mp3, + ;-), etc....
mobile companies keep track of all the calls/sms/emails/mms, etc - (or by law at least for 5-10 years again depending on which country you reside)
9) satellite phone communications are tracked and recorded.
10) the list goes on...

Some of them are easily justifiable and we need to have them and accept the fact that when we don't have these in place we land up in to blame culture.
How did the terrorists communicate, by email/phone/etc. do we have any records? NO. Why not?

Another important thing that we need to bear in mind that it becomes very very diffiult (no impossible though) to gather evidence across the country. This may be because of political pressure, Bureaucracy, red-tapism,etc..

As far as Indian government keeping tracking of all the emails from black berry, so what? all countries do. if you haven't done anything wrong then nothing stops you - but make sure you keep you blackberry in your possession and not give it to the ter.......t ;-)

I agree with Abhishekjha government should do more in the areas he mentioned, but there is quite a lot of things that needs doing, traffic jams ;-), including the dirty election game which is ongoing and will go on forever.

Thats my contribution.
 
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@hosting, come on now, are you trying to make me paranoid with that long list you've posted? :eek:

As far as Indian government keeping tracking of all the emails from black berry, so what?

While I certainly understand the need to find new ways to combat terrorism, I think all this monitoring of our emails, phones, internet activity, etc has gone too far. What happened to our basic right to privacy?
 
where do they keep so many records? ok let these guys run out of HDD space! xD

man they are stupid to think that all terrorists use only blackberries LOL.. they never learn from old mistakes that terrorists always use satellite phones with numbers starting computer generated ones like 800 series and these satellite phones cannot be tracked no matter what surveillance you have in hand. this is what even hackers use to break into govt.networks and there is no clue left for tracking.

though only local criminals use telephones and blackberries but the big terrorists and gang owners dont use these cheap ones xD, they have tools which cant be tracked, and what im very angry with is that despite of so much intelligence and surveillance the terrorists still manage to break into buildings, attack parliament, dive into twin towers, damn hell surveillance dept. is sleeping? they only produce record after many people are dead, they never tell anything beforehand or try to prevent common people being killed by such terrorists. what the surveillance captures on phone is a girl talking to her boyfriend on phone or daily videos of just couples living in a flat.. and all the rubbish things done in the loos of offices and organizations... so arent we just putting too much money in only one sphere and its misused?

that is too stupid and the only work of the intelligence dept. xD
 
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Wonder how they gonna implement this?

From what I understand, the government has instructed ISPs to allocate unique user ID and passwords for wi-fi services. Simultaneous logins won't be possible (although users can have more than one ID and password for multiple use).

With regard to wi-fi services at public places (eg hotels, restaurants, airport malls etc) ISPs have been instructed to provide a temporary login and retain a copy of photo ID for 1 year. Alternatively, these ISPs can provide login-in and password via SMS on mobile phone, and must retain your phone number for one year.
 
I'm updating this thread. The Indian Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 has come into force.

A new IT law has come into force in India that frees Internet portals from liability for third-party content and activity, but also gives the government powers to monitor communications on the Internet, and block web sites that are found to be offensive.
Source: India's New IT Law Increases Surveillance Powers

Does this mean the Indian government will now demand that email providers host servers in India, as outlined in the opening post? :confused: Time will tell?

Edit: I found a copy of the IT (Amendment) Act 2008. s.69 is the relevant section.
 
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