@auroville.org.in

The accounts officer of the Auroville Foundation informed the community that “all residents when contacting any working groups for work related queries will use their @auroville.org.in email address in order to have a proper response and have it archived for future reference” and that “all trustees, units, services managers are to only use @auroville.org.in to correspond with other Auroville entities within Auroville or other outside entities” and that “all communication with regard to their work should be using the email address domain auroville.org.in as “this allows for proper communication and archival needs.”

The RA-WCom responded to this announcement stating that the @auroville.org.in email service, which was created years ago by Aurovilians as a service to all Aurovilians and Auroville organisations and which has been used for personal, administrative and professional purposes within and out of Auroville, has for more than a year now been under the full control of persons whose identities, roles, powers and intentions have not been communicated publicly, even after multiple requests to do so. These persons can technically do anything to emails addressed to or coming from this domain: read, modify, delete, impersonate or block deliveries and receipts, including all the history, in targeted, manual, or mass automated operations. There is no protection against abuse nor any guarantee that the right to privacy is protected. Consequently, many users have decided to use other email providers, which follow due legal requirements and have clear contracts with their users. The RA-WCom objects that only @auroville.org.in email addresses should be used for all emails within Auroville and that some people have been threatened with being dismissed from their work and responsibilities if they do not exclusively use the @auroville.org.in. Given the opacity of the auroville.org.in service, this is not acceptable.