Dharamsala, June 18 – To guard against frequent hacking of its documents, the Tibetan government-in-exile has decided to make increasing use of other means of communication, like fax, and also to delink its key computer terminals from the Internet.
According to sources, the steps have been taken following instances where some confidential information was hacked from the Tibetan government offices located in McLeodganj. The “stolen” information was then passed on to the Tibetan Support Groups (TGSs) after attaching virus to it, which stuck up their computer set-ups. There are nearly 300 such support groups across various countries, of which nearly 100 are based in India itself.
“Since the information was circulated by masquerading it as an official communication released by the Tibetan government-in-exile, in most cases the support groups were easily deceived into receiving the virus-laced mails as a genuine document,’’ said Masood Butt, press coordinator of the Tibetan government-in-exile. We now prefer to fax confidential information or send it through other means, he added.
