The Hindu : New Delhi News : Mail account of Maulana Azad’s grandnephew hacked

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 19, 2007
ePaper

New Delhi

New Delhi

Mail account of Maulana Azad’s grandnephew hacked

Staff Reporter

Firoz Bakht Ahmed reported the matter to CBI
JMI professor’s mail hacked last year

NEW DELHI: The e-mail accounts of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s grandnephew Firoz Bakht Ahmed were hacked on Children’s Day prompting him into issuing an immediate clarification and also report the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

According to Mr. Bakht, a teacher at Modern School (Barakhamba) here, he received an e-mail from a rediffmail address asking him to send the user ID and his password or else his account would be closed. An unsuspecting Mr. Bakht sent the information asked for.

A day later, his well wishers and contacts, whose e-mail addresses were on the address book of Mr. Bakht’s ID, began getting mails pleading for immediate financial assistance to the tune of over 2,000 US dollars. It said that he had gone to Nigeria for some conference and had lost his belongings and the wallet. The mail was signed in the name of “Firoz Ahmed”.

The matter came to light when Mr. Bakht’s well wishers decided to get back to ascertain if everything was alright with him.

Subsequently, Mr. Bakht sent the clarifications and also reported the matter to the CBI.

“A major mistake I made was to give them my password. Nobody should ever supply his password to anybody over e-mail,” said Mr. Bakht.

In a similar case, a professor with Jamia Millia Islamia, Zahid Hussain Khan, also found his e-mail account hacked in August last. In his case too, the letter, purportedly on his behalf, requested the receivers of the mail for financial assistance. This time the hackers had claimed that the sender of the mail had to be hospitalised at Lagos in Nigeria after sustaining injuries in a terrorist attack.

However, when Prof. Khan got the trail of the e-mail checked, it turned out that it had been sent using a computer in a Turkish city. He recently reported the matter to the Delhi police.

“People should be aware about a few things. They should have a strong password. Also, it is beneficial to have a copy of the information which is fed while registering with an e-mail service provider. It comes in handy to establish the bona fide with the service provider in order to get a new password after the e-mail account has been hacked,” he said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi