Kerala - Kochi   

Beware of phishers

KOCHI: A Kochi businessman was shocked on Thursday when friends called up to find out how he had lost his money while visiting England and how could they help him to get back to India.

He told them that he was right in Kochi at the moment and convinced them that, following a heart surgery, he had not gone out of India for several months. Surprised, the friends then told him that they had received an SOS e-mail from him seeking 2,000 pound sterling. The e-mail had informed the friends that he had been stranded in the United Kingdom after losing all his money and that he was urgently in need of the amount to get back home.

The businessman then realised that his e-mail account had been phished. (Phishing, according to Wikipedia, is “the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as username, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”). He was now a victim of Internet fraud. He tried to open his G-mail account and found that the password had been changed. As calls from friends mounted, he sent out SMS messages to all whose mobile numbers he had stored saying that the e-mail message was fraudulent.

The businessman (whose identity is withheld to protect his privacy) also realised that the fraudulent message had gone out to 400-odd e-mail addresses in his e-mail account address book. Earlier that day, the businessman told The Hindu, he had received an e-mail message purportedly from ‘Google mail alert’ offering to expand his e-mail storage space. Unaware of the trap, he responded to the offer by filling out the information sought, including his password. The phisher immediately started working with the G-mail account and changing the password to block the entrepreneur’s access to his account. The phisher then sent out the ‘request for 2,000 pounds’ to all the e-mail IDs in the address book.

The businessman fortunately had an ‘alternative account’ with the G-mail and was thus able to secure the changed password and get access to his account. He also asked four of his friends to respond to the request for aid and get more details. The phisher promptly replied giving the address and other details to which the money could be sent.

The businessman then called up the Cyber Cell of the Kochi police to get a complaint registered.He suspects that the hacker could be someone from Kochi.

Phishing, like other types of ‘identity theft’ using the Net, is on the rise in India. Last month, the Reserve Bank of India had come out with a caution alerting the public against Internet fraud in view of the increasing number of financial victims of e-mail fraudsters.

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