What Mugabe can and cannot do with your e-mails

What Mugabe can and cannot do with your e-mails

• MWeb 'will obey' e-mail snooping laws

• Mugabe plays Big Brother on the internet

• Supreme Court bans e-mail snooping

By Robert Ndhlovu

FOLLOWING government moves to force Zimbabwe's internet service providers to block or pass to the government any internet content considered 'subversive', our IT expert Robert Ndhlovu looks at what President Mugabe's regime can and cannot do with your e-mails.

LET me shed some light on what the Zanu PF government can and cannot do regarding censoring email content for Zimbabwe internet users.

While we all know that its a violation of human rights, Mugabe and his cronies will still go ahead and do it anyway, given their well recorded track history of intolerance.

The Zimbabwe government can illegally force local ISPs (internet service providers) like MWeb, Telconet, ZOL, AfricaOnline etc to open locally registered domains ONLY.

Local domains are handled by ZISPA an internet registry in Harare formulated under Zimbabwean laws.

Domain names ending with .co.zw , .org.zw, .ac.zw are the ONLY ones the ZANU PF thugs can try to interfere with.

Examples of such emails include the following - these are random examples.

john.moyo@telco.co.zw, kanda.khulu@mweb.co.zw, professor.doom@uz.ac.zw egghead.moyo@zanupf.gov.zw

BUT all emails that are not local domains like .net, .com, .co.za , .co.uk CAN NEVER be accessed. Because the email servers that serve these are either in J'burg, Los Angeles, New York or London and are owned by big companies like Yahoo or Hotmail - both Microsoft products.

So as long as you use international emails to send sensitive information, there is no way Zanu PF dunderheads can open them, unless of course you give them your password.

Hacking of multi million servers at Yahoo or Hotmail not only calls of the highest code crackers in the world but is virtually impossible because of encryption thats is now being used.Even the FBI would have problems cracking your Yahoo password unless its made of less than for ur letters and its a common word like frank.

Pass this kind of information around so that people know that you can never access anyone's international email. Even Mweb cannot open your email because the email is stored in a remote server probably in California or UK.

So advise Zimbabweans to use emails from yahoo.com, hotmail.com, justice.com, mail.co.za - in short ANYTHING that is NOT registered in Zimbabwe.
Ndhlovu is an IT Consultant based in New York, USA and worked for two ISPs in Zimbabwe prior to relocating to the US
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