The Hindu : Front Page : Surgeon’s email account hacked

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Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
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Surgeon’s email account hacked

K. Srinivas Reddy

HYDERABAD: After websites being hacked, it’s now the turn of email accounts. An unknown hacker has let loose a series of fraud letters inducing email recipients to pay money after hacking accounts of hotmail users.

A city-based surgeon, Dr. B. Narsaiah fell prey to cyber vandals when his hotmail account was broken into and taken over recently. The hacker had changed the password of Dr. Narsaiah’s account and then began sending mails to those in the address book. The two-para email informed his friends world over that he had gone to Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and Freetown (Sierra Leone) to attend a meeting on HIV/AIDS education and that he had lost his money, travel documents and tickets.

The email requested his friends to send whatever money they could afford to bale him out of a piquant situation as he had to clear $1,900 hotel bill. He would need another $ 1,000 towards food and travel expenses. Worried over the sudden ‘emergency’ request some of his friends from the United States called up Dr. Narsaiah and only then did Dr. Narsaiah realise that his email account was hacked. Since the hacker had changed the password to access the account, he could not even send mails to his friends alerting them about the fraud.

“I have been calling up all my friends and asking them not to believe the email,” Dr. Narsaiah told The Hindu.

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