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Indian Telecom Authority Releases a Million Email IDs, Taken Down By Hackers

Posted by samzenpus on from the naming-names dept.

knwny writes: In a bizarre move that threatens the privacy of over a million internet users in India, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the list of email IDs from which it received responses regarding net neutrality. Most of these responses were sent by the general public following a massively popular online campaign to protect Internet neutrality in India. The regulatory body says that it has received large number of comments from the stakeholders on its Consultation paper on "Regulatory Framework for OTT services". So to aid the reading of comments, it has divided them into three blocks — "comments from the service providers," "comments from the service providers' association" and "comments from other stakeholders'"(this includes individuals, organizations, consulting firms etc). In the meantime, the TRAI website remains inaccessible after a DDoS attack by Anonymous India, the hacker collective, apparently in retaliation for the data release.

21 comments

  1. Email IDs? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Back when I was a lad, we knew that an "email address" was like a physical address - useless unless people know it. People even made them publicly available on the web!

    Yes, spammers abused this. But hiding addresses hardly helped. So many addresses have been dumped or dictionary brute forced by now it's hardly a big deal if your email address appears in one more place.

    So colour me unexcited by this terrible misstep.

    1. Re:Email IDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My experience has been contrary, after release by one of these big entities for some ostensibly public information reason, the spam received on an account used has markedly increased.

      To the point where I choose a deliberate throw-away account for these purposes.

    2. Re:Email IDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The article linked above is not clear on what exactly is made available. If the information also includes some information about each person's comment then it is more than just handing out an email address. It is making information about people available as well. Furthermore, it is sending out a list of email address from people who are taking an active stance on a topic of current interest. In that sense it is not just an email address but an email address for someone who is active at some level with respect to internet issues.

    3. Re:Email IDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was back in the day when your Email address wasn't also used as the ID for your account login credentials. Which IMHO is a terrible practice that significantly decreases account security across far too many sites.

    4. Re:Email IDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When hackers leak email addresses: A travesty, a crime of utmost proportions! Decades in jail for the lot!
      When a government leaks email addresses: colour me unexcited

    5. Re:Email IDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      THIS. Funny none of these bigass companies that value your privacy and security never thought of that.

    6. Re: Email IDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I thought this is a good thing. Doesn't data want to be free? The prevailing meme on Slashdot is that there is too much hidden information during the regulation formulation process. In this case the regulator is making the information available. This way an astroturfing campaign would be exposed.

    7. Re: Email IDs? by umghhh · · Score: 1

      Ac opting for transparency, tell me what is wrong with that picture. Or was it to cause laugh?

    8. Re: Email IDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too lazy to login is a third option.

  2. Hackers will hack by __aabppq7737 · · Score: 1

    Hackers will hack, whether via email, 0-days, social engineering, or other fresh-off-the-wall ideas.

  3. When we say "Email IDs"... by Ecuador · · Score: 1

    we are just talking about email addresses here, right? Or is it something else I am not familiar with? No, I will not RTFA to find out, who do you take me for?

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:When we say "Email IDs"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can access the entire mailbox - so you can see email ID, date email was received, subject and entire body of each email.

    2. Re:When we say "Email IDs"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you seriously suggesting that you've assumed from this article that their entire email inboxes have been compromised?

    3. Re:When we say "Email IDs"... by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      No he means what he said.

      The mailbox of the submissions is there. So you can see the Subject, Date, From, To, and body of the emails. Which has nothing to do with the inboxes of the people who sent the emails.

  4. teh haxx0rz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    protectin ur IDz by ddossin

  5. You can tell who will win this argument by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why would you create three branches when two are pretty much the same, service providers and service providers associations? Then just dumping all the rest into a final batch even though it spans most of the opposition. Corruption is why, palms are getting greased, individuals don't make the same "contributions" to politicians that multinational telecoms companies do. So obviously a set up.

    1. Re:You can tell who will win this argument by LeadSongDog · · Score: 1

      So you're saying "Becuz India"??

      --
      Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
    2. Re:You can tell who will win this argument by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're just doing the courtesy of announcing the decision in advance.

    3. Re:You can tell who will win this argument by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, because Slashdot "editors" don't.

  6. Send an email by ITRambo · · Score: 1

    Every one of the one million people should send an email, stating their feelings about this bone head move, to the person that made the decision to release the email addresses. That person's email address should be readily available. If not, hopefully, someone will make it so. The clown(s) needs to see what happens when email addresses submitted in confidence are disclosed to the public.

  7. "Email IDs" vs. "email addresses" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This story takes place n India. In India, most people refer to personal identifiers for electronic mail as "email IDs".

    As of this writing, the first Google search result that comes up is India.com's email registration, whose title proudly proclaims that you can be proud of having an email ID there.