Wants All Providers To Set Up At Least One Server In Country To Access Deleted Data
As it talks tough with Research in Motion (RIM) -- the makers of BlackBerry -- to provide access to the encrypted data flowing through its network, the government is contemplating measures to ban Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Google, Skype and Yahoo if they don't up their servers in India and give access to intelligence agencies.
Recently, agencies had problems retrieving data from servers of some of these ISPs located abroad while tracking mails of terror suspects and, in some cases, of those involved in money laundering.
Designated agencies such as Intelligence Bureau, National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) or Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) monitor mails of suspects on a routine basis. However, they are hamstrung when such mails are deleted from the mailbox of a suspect. Such messages can only be retrieved through imaging at the mother server.
ISP servers have images of all deleted mails for a certain period. Even if you delete mail from your mailbox, such messages can be retrieved from the server through imaging. India now wants all ISPs to set up at least one server each in the country for all domestic traffic so that intelligence agencies can have direct access to such deleted data through imaging whenever they want.
The students of city college were all ears when the deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Rajendra Dahale, recently spoke about the illuses of information technology and its consequences recently.
"Information technology legislation in the country has codified strict punishments for wrong uses. A prank or intentional misuse can land one in serious trouble, and the punishments involve heavy financial penalties and a long stay in the jail," he warned.
A part of the initiative, `cyber law and you', which the Rotary Club of Gandhi Bhavan has undertaken in cooperation with software company Seed Infotech and the Pune police, the DCP's presentation intended to drive home the importance of safe use of IT to students.
"People are getting familiar with IT at a very young age. Also, it is used extensively by students at graduate and higher level education. It is therefore necessary that these youngsters know about all aspects of using this technology so that they can grow up as responsible citizens," Vaishali Bhagwat, vice-president of the club, told TOI.
Bhagwat, a cyber law practitioner, said the club has helped put together a set of posters and a booklet on the subject.
"We intend to circulate these to as many educational institutions as possible," she said. According to her, the material, with the help of pictures and text explains the implications of specific wrong doings.
The companies preferred the traditional pencil-and-paper test for all these years
Learning begins at home. But, while Indian IT companies were busy providing software solutions for the rest of the world, they could not see beyond the traditional route when it came to hiring wannabe techies.
For all these years, IT majors - like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro Technologies, Cognizant Technology Solutions and HCL Technologies - have been using the pencil-and-paper test for campus recruitments.
Now, they have started looking beyond tradition to promote an automated platform for pre-employment screening tests online. "These tests provide a variety of efficiencies, helps in saving time and money in comparison to the traditional pencil-and-paper route and companies are finding it more apt ," said an industry source. "The assessment capabilities can be used to even size up the existing workforce for the purposes of team-building," he added.
While TCS administers the tests on their own, HCL is working in partnership with a Gurgaon-based company, Aspiring Minds. When contacted, HCL however declined to comment.
The $50-billion IT industry may be fighting a fierce war for talent as it tries to claw back to a double-digit growth rate this year, but Pune's Hinjewadi IT park is showing that peace can prevail even among rivals.
Twenty-eight residents of Hinjewadi, including top names like Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and Wipro, that once ruthlessly poached talent from each other, have now agreed to work collectively to reduce attrition.
At their first meeting hosted at the Infosys campus in Hinjewadi last month, CXO-level representatives from all 28 companies keenly explored a no-poaching agreement, but concluded it was unviable. However, they managed to seal a pact under which they will hire from rivals only after candidates have fully served out notice periods. Earlier, it was common practice for the hiring companies to pay salary in lieu of the notice period. This worked well for the hirer, but caused problems for the previous employer who would not have enough time to find replacements. "We met last month and worked out a broad agenda," confirmed Mritunjay Singh, the Pune head for Infosys and president of the Hinjewadi Industries Association (HIA). Infosys is Hinjewadi's largest employer with 42,000 on its rolls.
The companies have also agreed that new employees cannot join without a relieving letter from the previous employer. Earlier, it was common for IT pros to desert jobs without any notice.
All of this will be spelt out in a `code of ethics' that will be honoured by the HR departments of all these companies and by their employees.
Common Internet Portals Being Developed As Part Of Rs 2,000-Cr Project, First 10 By Oct
Citizens across the 28 states will be able to avail of all government services, including payment of utility bills and applying for a driving licence, through common Internet portals being developed as part of a Rs 2,000-crore state portal project, senior government officials told ET.
The government plans to develop portals for at least 10 states by October 2010, and the rest will follow. These state portals' services will range from getting a birth or death registration certificate, to applications for pensions, to getting a domicile or residence certificate all online. The forms will be available electronically.
"We expect many states to go live within six months. It will reduce red-tapism and make delivery of services hasslefree," said a joint secretary-level official at the ministry of IT & communications.
"Citizen service centre kiosks in rural areas will help the technologicallychallenged submit these forms online," the official added. The government plans to roll out almost 10,000 more CSC kiosks by December this year, taking the total to 90,000.
Indian back-office firms are winning more deals from clients in the US and Europe for onsite work than for their offshore services.
More business process out- sourcing (BPO) companies are setting up back-office units in the regions where their clients are located to help them save costs through process im- provements than by shifting work to low-wage countries.
These units are run by the BPOs, but employ local peo- ple.
India's outsourcing industry has been under fire from in- creasingly protectionist West- ern countries that are still bat- tling huge job losses after the worst economic downturn in decades.
This has forced the back-of- fice sector to innovate and of- fer clients smarter ways to save on costs.
Their Western clients, too, prefer onsite back-office units to be able to continue saving on costs while avoiding any backlash for shipping jobs out.
Indian BPOs are not new to process improvements. They have for long been building tools and investing in quality management standards such as six sigma to improve effi- ciencies and deliver work to clients from centres in India, but with cost arbitrage as the main draw.
FALSE ALARM: The `notice' also carried a threat that users who did not update their details within seven days would lose their account permanently
India's 71 million internet and close to 10 million broadband users are increasingly becoming the victims of vicious phishing attacks that can result in identity theft, danger to life and even crippling financial fraud.
On Wednesday, users of Google's email services received a legal notice from the gmail team asking them to update their account details for security reasons.
"Gmail Team is working on total security on all accounts in order to make Gmail better as ever and as a result of this security upgrade we require all Gmail members to verify their account with Google. To prevent your account from disability you will have to update your account by clicking the reply button and filling the space below," the mail read.
The legal notice from Gmail wanted users to refurbish their account name, password, occupation, birth date and country of residence. It also carried a threat that users who did not update their details within 7 days of receiving the warning would lose their account permanently.
However, when contacted, a Google spokesperson said: "Some spammers send fraudulent mass-messages designed to collect personal information, called `spoofing' or `password phishing'. We always advise our users to be wary of any message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information. Google or Gmail does not send unsolicited mass messages asking for passwords or personal information; even if the message asking for it claims to be from us, please don't believe it."
Imagine being thrown into jail for an innocuous Tweet. Or being sacked by your employer for an innocent status message. Worse, your wife files for divorce based on on what you put up on Facebook!
Social networking may be gaining traction across India, but the growing army of users riveted on microblogging websites such as Facebook and Twitter would do well to focus beyond privacy settings.
A humorous status message or an impromptu Tweet could get a person arrested, fired, or even divorced by recent changes in the country's IT laws, a development that seems to have gone unnoticed by most users bitten by the social networking bug.
Amendments to India's IT Act, notified last October, make status messages and Tweets admissible as electronic evidence and the onus of the posts on these accounts now rests solely on users, say cyber lawyers.
"Messages on a social networking can be used as electronic evidence under the IT Act," says lawyer Pavan Duggal, adding that posting a tweet or a status message online amounts to publishing in the public domain.
India has a teeming social networking population of about 35 million. Orkut dominates the spectrum with 15.5 million users, followed by Facebook at 10.3 million users, LinkedIn at 2.2 million users and Twitter at 1.4 million users, according to online audience measurement site Vizisense.
```Hey, this is Andrew calling. Do you have a minute? Can I talk you through the new features of your card?'' The voice of a Gurgaon call centre employee, thinly disguised as American by rolling the Rs, addressing a customer in Iowa, may become a thing of the past. The traditional voice calls that tried to sweettalk Americans into buying everything from credit cards to computers and which catapulted India to fame as the world's back-office, is fading out.
Competition from countries that have a greater cultural affinity with the US is fast upstaging India in outsourced voice services, compelling call centres to diversify into non-voice areas and give up their efforts to change the accents of Indians. Some centres have started moving up to higher-end voice based services that requires technical knowledge and problem-solving capabilities (a space where India still has an advantage), while some others are moving to service domestic call requirements.
In voice, many customers prefer the Philippines, a country that has been a US naval base and is hence culturally far closer to the US than India has been. India has already lost tens of thousands of jobs to this Pacific Ocean nation.
In 2007, India had over 3 lakh call agents, the Philippines had barely half that number
Today, India and the Philippines both have 3.5 lakh workers each in voice BPO South Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Australia and Ireland emerging as other major voice destinations Indian call centres moving into non-voice areas or higher-end voice-based services
Telemarketing clearly on decline
India had over 3 lakh call agents in 2007 when the Philippines had just half of that. Today, India and the Philippines have an equal strength of 3.5 lakh people in voice BPO.
In the furthest reaches of India's rural heartland, the cellphone is bringing something that television, radio and even newspapers couldn't deliver: Instant access to music, information, entertainment, news and even worship.
Despite its rapid modernization, many of India's 750,000 villages remain isolated except for the cellphone reception that now blankets almost the entire country after a decade of rapid expansion by operators.
So in villages that don't receive any FM radio stations, people have begun calling a number that has a recording of Bollywood tunes and listening to it on their headsets.
This primitive cellular "radio" service was used by close to 20 million Indians last year, phone company executives estimate.
"I call it the poor man's iTunes," says Mahesh Prasad, president of Reliance Communications Ltd., one of India's largest cellular companies. "A villager waiting for a bus has nothing to do. When he wants to kill some time, this is the only entertainment media available."
The cricket fan without a television or radio can dial up and listen to the latest match live on his phone. Bharti Airtel Ltd., India's largest cell company by subscribers, has a special service that calls hundreds of thousands of farmers every day with recorded messages of weather reports and advice about crops.
Tata Teleservices has a service which lets farmers use their cellphones to control the pumps that water their crops.
SMS rates are set to crash, with telecom watchdog Trai reconsidering its longstanding policy of non-interference.
Following an expose by TOI on November 5 that SMS tariffs are 50 to 100 times higher than what it costs service providers, a top Trai official said, ``We are going to issue a consultation paper to review telecom tariffs within 20 days to a month.''
Consumers can expect substantial relief in SMS tariffs latest by March. The official said the move would have come sooner had the regulator not had its hands full with a consultation process on 2G spectrum.
The now inevitable tumbling of SMS rates has important implications for data usage. At present, SMS forms less than 5% of total revenue for mobile operators.
The widespread proliferation of texting is expected to spin off into far higher levels of internet usage. Experts confirm that a crash in SMS tariffs could be the first step to generating demand-side pressure for wireless broadband access.
The cost of an SMS is a fraction of a paisa. This is because an average SMS consists of 1KB data, which takes a fraction of a second for transportation and termination. This revelation by TOI knocked the bottom out of claims that India has among the lowest telecom tariffs in the world.
Trai has so far refused to regulate rates under the belief that competitive markets were at work and tariffs reflect costs. However, in the SMS arena, competition has clearly failed to move prices closer to costs. The practice of pricing SMSs high has been prevalent for several years while Trai has chosen to look the other way. This, despite the facts stating otherwise in Trai's own cost data from its IUC regulation of August 2006.
Alert issued about two new viruses that can steal passwords
Cyber Space has again been hit by two new viruses which can cause heavy damage. One of the virus named as Bredolab is circulating widely through spam mails comes from the family of Trojan downloaders which downloads and installs rogue anti-virus programmes onto the infected computers about which the user has no knowledge.
This virus comes to the victim through mails with subjects like Facebook password reset confirmation, UPS invoice, Western Union Money Transfer available to withdraw'.
Also this virus installs password stealers into the infected systems and keeps sending data from the infected computer which could be important files containing classified information about the user like his bank account details, identity details and other important things. Once this information is leaked from the infected computer it can lead to heavy losses for the user as his account details and passwords can be used for phishing or his identity details can help people involved in making these viruses hack into their mail account and misuse it.
Few months back, email accounts of two senior doctors from the city was hacked into and was further misused by the hacker to send emails to people in the contact list of the doctors asking for monetary help through money transfer in a foreign country.
Aimed at tightening procedures and safeguards to monitor and intercept data to prevent cybercrimes, the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008, became effective today. The Act was passed by both the Houses of Parliament in December last year and was notified in February this year.
Besides monitoring and interception, the amended Act also deals with the appointment of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, which deals with computer security and situations arising from cyber attacks.
“A rapid increase in the use of computer and internet has given rise to new forms of crimes like sending offensive emails and multimedia messages, child pornography, cyberterrorism, publishing sexually explicit materials in electronic form, video voyeurism, e-commerce frauds like cheating by personation etc. So, penal provisions were required to be included in the Information Technology Act, 2000,” the government said in a statement today.
When floated for public feedback this May, the draft amendments (particularly Section 69A) had stirred up a hornets’ nest. Critics argued that the amendments gave the government blanket power to block news portals and other sites for ‘offensive’ content and could be abused.
The government, under Section 69A of the amended IT Act, can “block public access of any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in a computer resource” in the interest of sovereignty or integrity of India; defence of India; security of the state; friendly relations with foreign states; public order; and to prevent incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to the above.
This is an effort to bring the world wide web to the grassroots. If all goes as planned, in the next three years, panchayats across the country will have a broadband connection for e-governance.
In its second term, the UPA government has concretised Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi's proposal to build Rajiv Gandhi Bharat Nirman Seva Kendra at every panchayat -- the lowest level elected local body in a three-tier system.
This will mean that villagers do not have to travel long distances to government offices for for petty jobs and will be able to skip the red-tape.
The Rs 28,000-crore (Rs 280 billion) scheme is the third biggest rural development scheme after National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (Rs 39,100 crore) and National Rural Livelihood Mission (Rs 10,000 crore). The kendra (centre) will be set up in a two-room building to be constructed in each of the 265,000 panchayats.
The state governments will provide the land,while the Centre will fund the infrastructure.
Once the kendras start functioning, the villagers would be able to check their National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme bank accounts, pay premium for health insurance scheme for below poverty line families and can get many other services through these centres.
Us Now takes a look at how this type of participation could transform the way that countries are governed. It tells the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organising structures threaten to change the fabric of government forever.
The students of city college were all ears when the deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Rajendra Dahale, recently spoke about the illuses of information technology and its consequences recently.
Imagine being thrown into jail for an innocuous Tweet. Or being sacked by your employer for an innocent status message. Worse, your wife files for divorce based on on what you put up on Facebook!
```Hey, this is Andrew calling. Do you have a minute? Can I talk you through the new features of your card?'' The voice of a Gurgaon call centre employee, thinly disguised as American by rolling the Rs, addressing a customer in Iowa, may become a thing of the past. The traditional voice calls that tried to sweettalk Americans into buying everything from credit cards to computers and which catapulted India to fame as the world's back-office, is fading out.
