Dear Friends, Sometime ago I recieved a mail from one of my friends who is a faculty at BHU. That mail informed me that my friend had been abroad to attend a conference and there he lost all his belongings and he is need of some financial assistance. When I called his home to confirm the message, I was surprised to find him at home and he was not aware of all that I narrated to him. Later, after a couple of days he called me and told that similar mails have reached to all his friends whose mail ids had been stored in his address book. Moreover, he could not access his mail id because someone has hacked his mail id and changed his pass word. Such incidents are examples of how our emails could be hacked and misused. Yesterday, when I came across a similar news reported in the New Delhi page of the Hindu, I thought of sharing it with you all. I am pasting that article below Source: The Hindu
(http://www.hinduonnet.com/2007/11/08/stories/2007110859960300.htm) New Delhi Officials e-mail account hacked Devesh K. Pandey The officer is a Joint Secretary in the Union Agriculture MinistryMails have been sent in his name to his contacts seeking financial help NEW DELHI: The e-mail account of a Joint Secretary in the Union Agriculture Ministry has allegedly been hacked and mails have been sent in his name to his contacts seeking financial help. According to an FIR lodged at the Parliament Street police station, the senior Government official has alleged that his e-mail account that he used for all official correspondence was hacked on November 1 morning. He further alleged that using his mail account, someone posing as him has been sending mails to his contact persons, including top Government and private company functionaries, seeking financial help claiming that he was in trouble somewhere abroad. In response to those fake mails, the complainant started getting calls from his contacts enquiring about his well-being. The complainant told the police that he was unable to access his mail account any more. On the basis of the complaint, the Economic Offences Wing of the Crime Branch lodged the FIR at the Parliament Street police station on Tuesday and initiated investigations. While the police are trying to find out the nature of the fraud and identify the culprit, a senior police officer said incidents of fake e-mails seeking financial help on different pretexts are on the rise. In several cases it has been found that unsolicited mails are sent as spam using addresses of persons known to recipients. This is done probably using software that extract e-mail addresses from the list of contacts of an Internet user to send the malicious mails. In a recent incident, a Faridabad-based non-government organisation found that its e-mail account had been hacked by someone. It was suspected to be a variant of Nigerian Scam, wherein people get unsolicited mails offering handsome cuts in a financial deal involving huge amounts of money. Isn't it amazing similarity?? But shocking too!!! A.Rambabu __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
