'E-mail policy of the government of India, as this policy will be called, is almost ready and we are taking views from other ministries on this. The department is now taking views from other ministries on it. The Department of Electronics and Information Technology ( DEITY) is drafting a policy on e-mail usage for government offices and departments and the policy is almost ready. The government is expected to route all its official communication through the official website NIC's email service. “Microsoft has security measures in place to detect account compromise and requires additional information to verify the account owner and help them regain sole access.” Google and Yahoo did not release statements.NEW DELHI: Wary of cyber snooping, the government could ban e-mail services such as Gmail and Yahoo for official communications by December this year in a move to safeguard its critical and sensitive data. A Microsoft spokesman said stolen online credentials was an unfortunate reality. Strangely, however, the hacker asked for only 50 roubles, or $0.75, for the information, but gave it up for free after researchers who had discovered the site promised to “put in a good word” for him in other forums.

The discovery came when a Russian hacker was found bragging on an online forum that he had gathered and was ready to sell an immense amount of stolen credentials. The attack could have victimized as many as 40 million Yahoo Mail accounts, 33 million Hotmail accounts and 24 million Gmail accounts, but the majority of usernames are thought to be stolen from, Russia’s most popular email service. Though an attack of this scale has not been seen in years, the information in its entirety is being sold through Russia’s underground criminal network for, reportedly, next to nothing. As many as 97 million accounts have been compromised due to a huge cyber-attack on several high-profile email websites, and as many as 272.3 million users were probably affected according to Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security.

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