Trai Says Won't Display Email Addresses Only if Respondents Specify

After drawing flak for making public the email addresses of over 1 million respondents on its net neutrality and OTT regulatory framework consultation paper, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said it will not display addresses if users specifically state so in their counter comments.

A day before the deadline for counter comments to expire, Trai on Thursday said "all stakeholders are hereby informed that during submission of their counter comments, if anyone desires that his/her email ID should not be displayed, it may be specifically stated so in the email."

The regulator has suggested people interested in sending their comments to have a "proper name for identification and display" in the counter comments.

"Such respondent should also include 'Do not display my ID' in the subject of the email," Trai said.

The regulator had come under sharp criticism when it made the email addresses of over 10 lakh people public along with their response on Trai's consultation paper on regulatory framework for OTT or Internet based calling and messaging services like Viber, Skype, WhatsApp, Line, etc.

Trai said that it received a large number of emails from various stakeholders as comments and stakeholders also requested that their responses be published on the regulator's website alongside other comments received in line with past practice regarding such public consultations.

After processing the received emails, filtering various spam emails, duplicate emails etc., and for proper display on the Web, these emails were uploaded on Trai website, the regulator said.

"Since many of the emails had only email ID as the header, for easy identification of the stakeholders comments, the comments were segregated date-wise along with their email IDs and uploaded," Trai said.