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Thursday, August 11, 2005

Pawan Duggal comments Ebay India PaisaPay encryption

Is Encryption legal in India?

By Urvashi Kaul
(Asian Age)

New Delhi, Aug. 10: Is encryption legal in India? Well that’s the impression one gets when you log on to any of the online auction sites. Any Indian citizen, unaware of the IT Act 2000 or the Wireless and Telegraph Act would be led to believe that it is, indeed, legal in India, without realising that he/she would be liable to imprisonment for up to five years.

For instance, ebay.in, an online auction site has been, apparently, inducing (in to participating) its buyers and sellers in to breaking the law. Incidentally, Ebay India had acquired bazzi.com in July 2004. It may be recalled that bazzi.com’s CEO Avnish Bajaj is still facing charges in connection with circulation of the lewd MMS depicting two Delhi Public students in a sexual act.

While the Indian IT Act, 2000 allows absolutely no encryption, ebay.in, seemingly, tells its site visitors that 128 bit encryption is legal in India. Furthermore, ebay.in has been inviting its customers to fax their Credit Card details in order to pay sellers through PaisaPay (a gateway used for payment provided through leading banks like ICICI, HDFC, Citibank), that the website claims comes to a "secure server" and only "authorised ebay employees have access to".

IT Act experts point out that by asking customers to fax their credit card statement which contains other details like name, credit card number and billing address, these websites are actually "aiding and abetting" credit card frauds.

"Going by the present status," said informed sources, "The Central Government, so far, has not notified any security procedures under Section 16 of the IT Act for on-line electronic commerce, banking and financial transactions in India." Informed sources also point that the department of telecom, which consents to 40 bits encryption also seems to be overlooking law.

Cyber law expert Pawan Duggal said that, "Although the government has not made any effort to define encryption in the Indian IT Act, but technically it clearly says that it is not allowed."




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1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

E-Commerce has become the one of important need for any business or it is another way to handle business easily by providing convenient services to public.

In the last two decades, there have been improvements in the way online business is conducted.
E-commerce sites and applications have contributed a lot to these changes, and the changes have improved how many online traders do business.
Where some sites have over the years improved on various areas with a sole aim of improving on the business experience of both parties. On the other hand some sites are found to be very worst and fraud with their services, came to know after a survey, I have some of examples like, Indiatimes shopping, Timtara, Jabong.com, 100bestbuy, Rediff Shopping, ebay. Even I went through some of consumer forums and also found so many complaints against these sites. I thing Govt. must have take a needy action against these fraud sites.

1:59 PM  

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