Government workers in India will soon be banned from using Google’s Gmail service for official communication in a move said to be in response to revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US, a national paper reported.
Two weeks after Dubai announced a ban on private emails by Government staff, a senior official in India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said the crackdown would apply to 500,000 government employees, according to The Times of India.
. It emerged last month that Dubai government employees are banned from sending and receiving private emails at work, including the use of independent email providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail.
The new regulations announced by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, specifically referred to religious and political communication as well as messages relating to charitable causes.
Workers are also not allowed to open unsolicited mail, spam or emails that contain viruses, or alter the date, time, source of destination information on an email.
