Thursday, November 5, 2009

E-Terrorism!

Even if you are not computer savvy but have an email account, than it is for sure to have encountered email terrorist attack on your mail box. Wondering who these terrorists are and what are they up to?
Definitely you must have got mails at some point of time from your own near and dear ones with a beautiful picture of some God or Goddess and asking you to concentrate on its eyes to reap many fold benefits or witness some kind of miracle in your life to happen in the next 7 days. Needless to say that normally such kind of unsolicited chain mails keep coming on your mail box. These mails with spiritual or religious sentiments attached come with statutatory warning that the chain should not be discontinued to avail the benefit and also must be forwarded to another 10 persons failing which you shall encounter some miss happening! And lo! You are in soup what to do next, to forward the mail or not. God only knows who the perpetrators of such mails are and what their agenda is but one thing is sure, the threat and the fear factor works. Invariably, the recipient of such mail is tempted to pass on the buck on to another 10 persons. This is what I term as e-terrorism!
In a similar manner, there is one more kind of e-terrorism not in the nature of chain mails which keep popping up on to your mail box. These are bound to rob you off if not acted wisely. Sample this:-
“Congratulations, your email Id has been selected by our electronic random selection system for a cash prize of US$ 50, 00,000/-” OR “You have won a UK lottery of 165, 50,000 pounds in our monthly draw, Congratulation!”
In such mails, you are asked to send them Bank details; password, email Id password, etc along with foreign remittance of few thousands to cover handling charges. What happens next should be well known to avid readers of any newspaper. The bank account is hacked and computer injected with virus through e-terrorism!