There is so many snoopy internet users are out there – especially kids. They may know you or not, you are their target. Why do they have an interest in you? I don’t know why they have an interest in you – may be they want to know who you are, who are the people you communicate with through your email, or you might have just awakened their sleeping investigative mind. To correlate, don’t you have some curiosity to know what US President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair communicate in their email?
There is nothing wrong in inquisitive mind. However it is crossing the line, when you adopt predatory methods to retrieve information about others – in technical terms it is called Identity theft.
It raised an alarm when I received the following email from Google Password Assistance service department.
—–Original Message—–
From: accounts-noreply@google.com [mailto:accounts-noreply@google.com]
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 10:39 PM
To: [undisclosed]
Subject: Google Password Assistance
To initiate the process for resetting the password for your [undisclosed]@gmail.com Google Account, visit the link below http://www.google.com/accounts/RP?c=3145706362987342617&hl=en
If clicking the link above does not work, copy and paste the URL in a new browser window instead. Thank you for using Google. For questions or concerns regarding your account, please visit the Google Accounts FAQ at http://www.google.com/help/faq_accounts.html.
This is a post-only mailing. Replies to this message are not monitored or answered.
After sailing through the Google gmail email, I asked myself, where was I on Friday November 24 at 10:30 PM – the time when the gmail mail was generated? Interesting! I did not request a change of my gmail account password any time on Friday, so who might have invaded into my space? I can’t get any satisfaction to this mysterious question, so I pondered further.
I can put the incident this way. There is someone living in the Internet world, got some interest into my life, wanted to access my personal email account, and so made an attempt on the gmail site. The predator had my email address, but not the password. Since the party had some information about me, he thought to click the ‘I cannot access my account ‘ link on gmail.com website – he then clicked the Forgot password link. That’s where he was struck. He could not further continue as sites like Yahoo or Hotmail – the email providers like Yahoo and Hotmail provide a web page where you can try answering to some password questions, and finally reset the password. The Gmail does not work that way. The Gmail sends an email to the secondary email of the user to inform and asking to reset the password.
You may be thinking, how easy is it to get into someone’s email, and access it. Wait! You will be caught if you attempt this. This is called Identity theft, and punishable under law. You can be anonymous or not – when you invade the privacy of someone else, you are inviting troubles. When someone finds that you information is leaked, he can file a criminal and civil lawsuit, and any email provider like gmail, hotmail, or yahoo will be asked to testify, and you can be in trouble.
If you think someone has hacked into your email account to access your mail, there are precautions you can take to protect your email possessions.
1. Change the password, and other security settings of your email account. Updating the password every 14 days is good.
2. Have your own customized email address. Open your own domain, also called your website address, and use clients like outlook, Eudora, Opera Mail Client, and Netscape Mail Client to download emails to your computer every time when you access your email. Web hosting companies like RedDirtHost.com can register and host a domain for low as $4.99 per month. You can have your own email address such as george@george.com, and protect your emails.
3. Download all the email from the accounts like gmail.com to your computer, and delete anything from the web. Some email provider like Yahoo does not allow you to do this unless you pay them, however Gmail will allow you to. You can use email client software like Outlook to do this. To read how to do this, visit the website RedDirtHost.com
4. Don’t publish your email address on Internet unless it is necessary – on sites like forums, guest books.
5. Don’t keep business email address in online address book of web email providers like Yahoo, MSN – especially if you run a business. The predator can hijack your email account, steal your customer’s emails and solicit business with them.
6. Eventhough you would like to keep emails on Yahoo or such web companies’ server, don’t keep any email having your personal information like Credit Card data, personal address, date of birth, passport information etc…