New Delhi: Internet content providers Yahoo,
Gmail and others would be asked to route all emails accessed in
India through the country even if the mail account is
registered outside the country.
The move comes in the wake of instances where security
agencies could not have a real-time access to some emails as
they were registered outside the country but were opened in
India.
During a recent high-level meeting held in the office of
Union Home Secretary R K Singh, the Department of Information
Technology (DIT) was asked to take up the matter at the
earliest with the content providers.
During the meeting, director general from CERT-in
informed that content provider Yahoo automatically locates all
email accounts registered in India to the server in India,
minutes of the meeting said.
However, Yahoo accounts registered outside India and
subsequently accessed from India are routed through servers
outside India, it said.
"It was decided to advice Yahoo, Gmail etc that all
emails accessed from India should be routed through servers in
India," it said, adding that the DIT would take up the matter
with the content providers.
The need for this was felt after security agencies failed
to access accounts of suspected terrorists of Indian
Mujahideen during the surveillance period as the same had been
opened in a European country.
When the content provider was approached, the sleuths
were told that in order to see the mails, which had been
accessed from India, a request to a European nation where the
server was based, was required, official sources said.
PTI
