The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India‘s (TRAI) website has been allegedly taken down after they released all the email IDs of those who responded to their consultation paper on Net neutrality. Anonymous India, group of hackers, has claimed credit for taking down the website with a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack.

TRAI had released over one million names, email IDs and the contents of their responses in a downloadable PDF format on the TRAI website for public viewing.

TRAI had earlier asked for responses from service providers, their associations and general public for their views on regulating OTT or over-the-top applications and services which are accessible over the internet. Their draft consultation paper also addressed issues about security concerns and net neutrality. They received more than a million responses.

The responses have been categorised into “Comments from Service Providers,” “Comments from Service Provider Associations” and “Comments from other stakeholders.” The responses from “other stakeholders”, namely the general public has been sorted datewise for “easy access.” One can search for a name or an Email ID with as simple a search command as Ctrl+F.

Comments in the third category is being updated as and when the comments for a particular date has been complied.

While this seems to be a standard procedure for all of TRAI’s consultation papers in the name of transparency, it has not gone down well with the general public, with some calling it “a blatant violation of privacy”. Several have also expressed their concerns over marketeers and spammers for whom the million plus emails are a goldmine.