More free e-mails for Malaysians
Najib, mana pigi ?
The first to come online was Free 1Malaysia Email. Another, MyOh.My Email, was launched last night, billing itself as the “scandal-less citizen inbox”.
Speaking to FMT, one of the initiators of MyOh.My, said: “We’re just a group of concerned citizens, not involved in politics at all, and we were sort of tired of the whole MyEmail saga. It’s actually something that people of grassroots can put together quite easily.”
More than 300 people have registered for the MyOh.My email service, which will be powered by Google.
“We spent US$50,” said the spokesman, adding that his group consists of four individuals.
“Why should it cost government agencies 50 sen to send e-mails? It is clearly a rent-seeking business. Someone has gotten a monopoly of a particular type of transaction. And now they are setting up a toll booth. It is just ridiculous.
“This speaks of a bigger issue of government procurements. We want to say that the way it is done can be changed, especially for IT projects.”
He said he and his colleagues were hoping that the website would get Najib’s attention and that they could meet him face-to-face.
“We want to tell him how these kinds of procurements can be significantly improved. Open tender is clearly very important. But firstly, before sending out requests for proposals or doing anything else, they should be reaching out to the public for suggestions, and this can be easily done with the social networks we have these days.”
The spokesperson also spoke of concerns over privacy and security in the MyEmail project, noting that it is a large-scale project overseen by the government but owned by a single private company.
“Goodness knows what they have in their software. This type of centralisation is not a good thing”.
MyEmail is operated by Tricubes Bhd. Its CEO, Khairun Zainal Mokhtar, announced yesterday that users could choose to buy a USB biometric device from the company for a “more secure” e-mail.
Commenting on the announcement, the MyOh.My spokesman said: “USB keys have been hacked before. We should not pretend to the public that any system is failsafe by saying that it is secure. Tricubes is just inviting hackers to ask ‘Oh really?’”
Another parody, 50million Mail, calls itself the “Bolehland Citizen Inbox”. It is powered by Microsoft’s Windows Live.
“If you are a Bolehlander, then you are entitled for a 50M mail account,” it says on its home page. “Registration is simple and activation is immediate.”
It warns: “Do not use your 50M mail to directly communicate with regime leaders and receive replies directly from them, as it will be dangerous for you.”
Also read:
Spoof site mocks 1Malaysia e-mail
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