By IANS
Lucknow : A Lucknow-based journalist Thursday filed a police complaint alleging harassment at the hands of a hacker who managed to break into her Yahoo account and started posting mails in her name, claiming she was in distress and seeking “financial assistance”.
Kulsum Talha, who works for an international news agency, got the shock of her life when a friend called her to say, “I understand that you are in distress in Nigeria and you need money; don’t worry I will send it across.”
She was flabbergasted as she had never been to Nigeria and was in Lucknow at that time.
“It was then that I realised that someone had managed to hack my account and was trying to solicit money from my acquaintances,” Talha told IANS here.
She is not the first one to fall prey to hackers.
Two Banaras Hindu University (BHU) professors had faced a similar situation not very long ago when frantic calls from their friends asking them about their “distress” led them to realise that someone was using their mail id.
According to Talha: “It began with a mail I received on my Yahoomail account saying that my mailbox was clogged and that I should re-confirm my password. Presuming the mail to have come from Yahoo, I promptly gave my password, which I realised only later was a major blunder.”
She said: “The next day I received a call from a friend asking me what had gone wrong and how did I get stuck in Nigeria, and also where did I want the $1,500 to be sent.”
She realised that someone was out to dupe her as well as her acquaintances.
“On cross checking with BHU Professor J.S. Singh, I discovered that he had fallen into a similar trap where the mailer had gone to the extent of even giving the Nigeria address where the money was to be delivered,” said Talha.
The address given was Mary Adams, Western Union, 33 Allen Avenue, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria, according to Singh.
Confirming the complaint, Special Task Force chief Shailja Kant Misra told IANS: “We are going to investigate the complaint and hope to get to the bottom of this racket.”