Gmail, Yahoo Could be Banned by Government for Official Use

It's time that you ramped up those mobile data plans on your handset. According to reports, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) could be planning on banning foreign email services like Gmail and Yahoo for official use.

The new plans for changes in terms of usability of the Yahoo or Gmail for official use comes with plans to safeguard critical and sensitive government data. A bit of a downer that, isn't it?

As revealed via sources, a proposal to this new effect is being handled by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) for cabinet approval by month-end. Government communication, apart from those of ministry of defence and external affairs, will be done with the platform of the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

The proposal may be a bit of a bad news since most of us are mostly inclined on using those services. But it is being made to protect large numbers of critical government data, while also aiming at making it mandatory for government offices to communicate only on nic.in platform.

Moreover, under the policy over 5-6 lakh central and state government employees will be asked to use email service provided by NIC. Although DeitY will require about Rs 4-5 crore to update NIC's infrastructure for it to perform as it's expected to.

"Sources said the policy seeks to protect large amount of critical government data and aims to make it mandatory for government offices to communicate only on nic.in platform, not on commercial email services Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc," a TOI report states.

"To ensure smooth working of the NIC platform, DeitY will soon require about Rs 4-5 crore to ramp up NIC infrastructure," it adds.

While the new move may seem a bit too harsh for all its users, you cannot really blame anyone. And especially after concerns about rising cybercrime and hacking incidents.