FG Goofs with Free eMail Counter-Terrorism Scheme

The Nigerian Army yesterday launched an online information system that will track and tackle terrorism in Nigeria but committed the fundamental blunders that will make the system dead on arrival and waste resources.

The scheme’s information reporting system is hinged on Yahoomail, and Gmail– so-called free email accounts, which either by ignorance or sheer mediocrity or both, gives the initiative away as child’s play.

The so-called free email accounts; are subject to deliberate and unintended abuses.

And  for what is worth: just for winning a bet, a smart hacker can break into the accounts and put the source of intelligence and security agencies at great risks.

It is easy to steal or break into free email accounts because users of the accounts share their Internet domains with millions of other users across the Web, and thus the risk of having people eavesdropping on them.

It is also surprising that the Army is playing catch up with technology when they should be ahead or at least at par with the unarmed but lethal band of criminals on the information superhighway.

But Major General Ibrahim Sani, chief of transformation and innovation centre of the Nigerian Army, said , that network system cannot be compromised.

He said that information processing system will alert a network of security agencies nationwide of any terrorist activity reported by any Nigerian via email or text message and that it will respond confidentially to all distress and emergency calls and  it can that the system can  track and tackle terrorist threat in the country within fifteen minutes.
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Major General Sani said that the Nigerian Army information processing system can reached via the following email address: Nigerianarmytips@yahoo.com; and Nigerianarmytips@gmail.com.

“SMS can also be sent to the following dedicated numbers: 08160030300; 0705333123 and ;08181555888”  the Army said

The system is designed to speedily alert the Police, the State Security Service (SSS) and other security agencies of any terrorist action observed in any part of the country.

Major General Sani maintained that basic training of skilled operators on the system has already begun, adding that issues of power failure or hacking into the network will not be a challenge as the system will be powered by an inverter and managed by professionals.

The information processing system, according to the army, also allows communication in local languages as long as the information is clearly described using the right medium.

Findings however showed that the Army may have hastily put the system together and may not be aware of the red flags of free email accounts.

Of recent, free email accounts, have been seeing their accounts broken into with the emails confirming that there are security holes.

Breaking in and stealing data in free email accounts is as simple as ABC and the Army authorities ought to know.

Today, it is common to see hijacked accounts send emails to select individuals, while there are reports of wanton scams perpetuated by emails broken into by criminals.

The .ng , Nigeria’s Code Top Level domain name, an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for Nigeria only provides better assurance for such am initiative that requires so much delicacy and accuracy