South African government departments and officials aren’t shy of using email addresses from public service provides such as Google and Yahoo for key communications, says an expert.

According to Haroon Meer, who is the founder of IT security advisory firm Thinkst, this is worrying for South Africa, especially in light of the Edward Snowden revelations.

Snowden is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee that exposed the US National Security Agency (NSA) for its mass surveillance programme on US citizens.

And Meer, speaking at the annual ITWeb Security Summit in Johannesburg this week, delivered a talk entitled “Snowden revelations: What do they mean for South Africa.”

“It’s quite clear if your mail is sitting in Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail you’re probably going to be fair game,” he said.

Meer also explained how, for example, South Africa’s presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj uses an Apple iCloud email address for journalists to contact him.

Overnight, the UK’s Telegraph newspaper has reported how “Apple has denied that its iCloud service has been hacked, after iPhone and iPad users around the world reported that their devices had been frozen by a hacker demanding money to unlock them.”

Meer added other South African government websites ask people to mail them at Yahoo.com addresses.

“Official sites like .mil or .gov accept email addresses from gmail and yahoo, and this makes the world of foreign intelligence agencies a whole lot easier,” Meer said, explaining the possible threat of international cyber espionage on South Africa.