Alksnis will close Mail.ru?

Deputy Victor Alksnis March 12, 2007 AD Wrote and sent a deputy inquiry to the Minister of Information Technology and Communications of the Russian Federation, Leonid Reiman, which addresses issues related to the use of Russian free mail services. The main problems, according to the colonel, are that passwords of user accounts are very poorly protected, technical support does not fulfill its direct responsibilities, and postal workers allegedly are engaged in selling passwords to mailboxes.

In support of his words, Alksnis gives information about the much more frequent incidents of cracking the diaries of users of LiveJournal. They happen, according to the deputy, because of the low level of protection of mailboxes of free services (such as Mail.ru and Pochta.ru), which are easily hacked and to which, as is known, and the passwords of the LJ account of the majority of LJ clients are recovered. A recent example of an incident of this kind is the cracking of Alexei Lotov's network diary: his mailbox ltvltv@mail.ru was hacked, even though the password for it was quite difficult - jdhTr5dgffd3q. Proceeding from this, Alksnis makes the assumption that the employees of postal services are engaged in the sale of account passwords.

In addition, the deputy points out that in most cases, users can not return mailboxes themselves, since technical support of postal services either does not respond to requests, or simply does not fulfill the promised. Also, the deputy criticizes the "inaccessibility" of Internet companies: "Most of them try to make it as difficult as possible to communicate with customers with their specialists. Find detailed information about the company, its management, addresses, phones, even on the official website, it is often impossible. "

At the conclusion of his request Viktor Alksnis asks Leonid Reiman "to instruct him to check the arguments of citizens, in particular with regard to Mail.ru, Pochta.Ru, in terms of securing confidential information, as well as providing technical support to clients." If violations of the current legislation are found, the deputy asks "to take the established response measures, up to the revocation of the license."

The "accused" themselves were not much concerned about the parliamentarian's request. In the company Mail.ru to comment on the request of the deputy Alksnisa refused, but noticed that "they do not consider the charges brought against them grounded and provable." In Pochta.ru expressed regret over the fact that Viktor Alksnis did not present his complaints in a more constructive manner. "At the same time, it should be noted that the postal service is reliable enough to protect the mailboxes of its users," Safe told Pochta.ru.