Someone’s Trying to Hack My Gmail Account
Posted: February 2, 2008 Filed under: Business, E-mail, Economics, Finance, GMail, Google, Life, Microsoft, Orkut, Software, Technology, Thoughts, yahoo, Yahoo! Mash | Tags: Business, digg, E-mail, Economics, Finance, flickr, Gmail, Google, Life, Microsoft, Orkut, Software, Technology, Thoughts, yahoo 48 Comments »UPDATE: Now my Yahoo! account has been hit. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m not being able to log-in. I use this email for a lot of correspondence work. 
I had used this account to purchase a domain name today and my credit card detail’s stored. This Yahoo! account was earlier being used as the Alternate Email address for my GMail account. Before this problem started, I’d changed the alternate email address for my GMail account. I’ve been trying to log in. Doesn’t work. I’m trying to use the Forgot Password Page. But all that I get is a BLANK PAGE. No Password. I am on hold with Yahoo! Small Business Center because I bought a domain through them and my Yahoo! Mail account is linked to my Domain account. Let’s see if they’ll be able to help…else I don’t know what to do.
In the mean time, if you want to contact me, email me at timeandagainblog at gmail dot com. I’ll answer your comments once this tension is over. Please bear with me. If you have any advice, please leave me a comment or an email at the above mentioned GMail address.
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A couple of weeks back, Ish had written a post saying that someone is trying to hack his GMail account. The same thing’s happening to me now. I got a “Change Password” link in my secondary e-mail address thrice. Good thing that I was online when this happened.
Me: Is this a genuine email? This can’t be happening to me!
Yahoo! Mail: Yes, this is a genuine email. We’ve verified it.
Me: Okay! I gotta think fast.
So, I deleted those emails with the “Change Password” links. Next, I logged into my Google account and Changed the Password and the Security Question too. Unfortunately, I use the same Google account for all my services- Google Mail, Google Reader, Google Analytics, Google Calendar, Google Notebook et al. Not to forget, the most important of all, Google Checkout, which has my credit card details. So, I’ve deleted that too. The last thing I want to be hit with is a bill costing me thousands of dollars.
The GMail account associated with this ID is quite important because I use it for lots of important work. Anyway, after doing some preliminary damage control, I sat down to think who could be behind this attack. Can be anyone, unfortunately. People are so curious to know about other people’s private lives…it’s quite funny.
Did the hacker really think that clicking the “Forgot Password” link would be a good way to hack into my account? Didn’t he know that the “Forgot password” link would be delivered in my secondary e-mail address? I’m guessing that whoever tried this method is probably an amateur hacker.
This incident reminds me of another one that happened a couple of months back. One of my good friends tried to hack into my Yahoo! Mail account. I was dumb enough to assume that nobody will ever try to hack my email account. This friend knew enough about me to guess the answer of the Security Question. The next day, I tried to log into my Yahoo account and failed to do so. It didn’t even occur to me that it might have been hacked. I thought that Yahoo’s server must be down.
Next, I logged into my GMail account to check my emails. To my surprise, the very first email was from my friend, explaining to me that he tried to hack into my account and has not read any of my personal emails and he’s very sorry about it. He also gave me the new password. Now starts the fun part. I logged into my Yahoo! account to change the Password and the Security Question. Well…there was no direct link to change the Security Question! Can you believe it? I had to contact Support and verify my identity. A whole bunch of administrative hassles later, my Security Question was changed.
Lessons Learned:
1. Never ever trust anyone. By anyone, I mean just that. Look at my friend. If a friend tries to hack into your account just because he’s very curious, can you blame a stranger?
2. Don’t panic. First do the needful (Change your password and Security Question). If you have confidential information in your email account, then forward those emails to another account and then delete them from the primary email address.
3. I’m thinking of contacting Support, but probably it won’t help. The GMail help section says:
When an attempt to recover your Gmail username or password is made, an email from Google is automatically sent to your secondary email address.
If you didn’t request to recover your username or password, you can ignore the message. If you’re concerned about the security of your account, we recommend changing your password and security question.
The Gmail Team isn’t able to provide you with information about attempted logins to your account including, but not limited to, the IP address from which the attempted login was made, and the time and date attempted logins occurred.
So there is no way that I’ll get to know who did this sinful deed. But you can follow these directions in case your account gets compromised.
4. I tried the “I cannot access my account link” and clicked on “Forgot my password”. After I entered my username, I got this message:
We’ve sent instructions to the secondary email address you provided during signup.
If you don’t have a secondary email address, or if you no longer have access to that account, please try the ‘Forgot your password?’ link again after five days. At that point, you’ll be able to reset your password by answering the security question you provided when you created your account.
To prevent someone from trying to break into an account you’re actively using, the security question is only used for account recovery after an account has been idle for five days. The Gmail team cannot waive the five day requirement or access your password under any circumstances.
If you’re unable to answer your security question or access your secondary email account, we regret that the Gmail team cannot provide further assistance. If you’re concerned about the security of your account, please visit our Security Center.
So, this person might try to retrieve my password after the five day lock period is over. On my part, I’ve changed the Security Question and no one knows the answer except me. Unless the person uses a brute force mechanism. *shudders* I like the way GMail is handling this by providing a five day safety period. That’s an amazing find because it gives me an opportunity to react and change the password/security question in the mean time.
Yahoo! has started a sign-in seal process that will help you distinguish a genuine Yahoo! site from a phishing site. It’s a good idea to do that. Earlier, I had seen that sign-in seal process only while signing into my credit card accounts. Good to know that email service providers have also introduced such a feature. I’m waitig for GMail to come up with something like this too.
In other tech news, Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo! for $44+ billion. This came as a big surprise to me. Ballmer has been trying to acquire Yahoo! since more than a year. Yahoo’s share price has been declining since a couple of months. Recently, it hit an all time low of $20. Just two days back,
Business Week had published an article that says-
Layoffs and a refocusing effort can only do so much. CEO Jerry Yang needs to find exciting new products or services if he hopes to make Yahoo sing again.
Shortly after, I read this piece of news about Microsoft’s public offer to buy Yahoo! Yahoo’s share price increased as soon as this piece of news was disseminated. Google’s share price has recently been on a downward spiral, because the company has missed the earning estimates of the analysts. Nevertheless, Yahoo and Microsoft are facing increasing pressure on account of Google’s Search Engine.
Yahoo! has a very strong brand value, which, in my opinion will be compromised if this deal fructifies. Even Ballmer has said that he’s not sure if the brand name “Yahoo” will remain. As an avid Yahoo! user, I’m not very happy with this announcement. My dislike for Microsoft is well known. All that Microsoft will bring to board is its 75,000+ strong work force, who’re anyway bundled up with useless ideas. Yahoo’s email service and the photo sharing service Flickr are really popular. But it does lag behind Google by a very wide margin in the search engine depart. Perhaps an acquisition with help Microsoft, which has the 3rd highest share in the Search Engine market, compete with Google on an equal footing.
Almost all of Google’s income is due to its Adsense business, which is indirectly a success thanks to its killer search engine. If Microsoft were to acquire Yahoo, the former will capture Yahoo’s market share and also bring on board its R&D department (how good is the R&D department….is another question) and tremendous wealth. Recently, Microsoft posted high profits on account of its new Operating System Vista and very low profits in all other departments. Perhaps this deal is all that this company needs to revive itself. Maybe Microsoft will still manage to screw up its business. Who knows. Merging two companies that have different work cultures, different product offering, different set of business principles and ethics is not so easy. Not to forget, lots of Yahoo! employees will be laid off, in addition to the already announced 10,000+ people who are being given the cut. This will only leave the other employees disgruntled. On top of this, imagine working for a new boss. The problem will only aggravate for people who are higher up in the corporate ladder.
It takes a couple of years (in the very minimum) to pull off such an acquisition. $44 billion is not exactly peanuts either. Ballmer says that he’ll save at least a billion dollars if this deal comes through. Let’s hope he’s right and let’s hope that Yahoo and its products survive. He’s known for his craziness and I hope that this is not one of his “pet projects”.
In the mean time, you might want to look for other email and photo sharing applications. I don’t know if Yahoo! Mail and Flickr will remain the same. 
UPDATE: Found this on Digg- What Will Happen To Flickr if MSFT Buys It
Blogging Anonymously
Posted: December 8, 2007 Filed under: Blogging, Cartoons, comics, E-mail, General ramblings, Google, Life, Technology, Thoughts | Tags: Blogging, Cartoons, comics, General ramblings, Google, internet, Life, Technology, Thoughts 15 Comments » 
In the past twelve hours, I’ve read posts by at least two bloggers (Amrita and Broom) who have expressed their anger at people who take pleasure in “outing” the anonymous bloggers. I can perfectly understand their emotions and what they are going through. Many of us write blogs to express personal emotions. The least we can expect from our readers is to keep shut even if they realize who we might be. I don’t understand why some people have such an itch.
I remember changing my nickname quite often between Ruhi and my real name. I was not too sure if it makes sense to use my real name, the reason being that sometimes, I do write crazy stuff in my blog and I don’t want a potential employer tripping on it by any chance. It’s not that we are not to be blamed. If we want to remain completely anonymous, then we need to retain some pieces of information and never mention them on our blogs. This might include things like your birthdate, your current residence, your phone number, address etc.
There are some tools that can be used to remain as anonymous as possible:
1. Run a Google Search for your real name and see what the results are. You might be surprised to see that even though you might have taken a page down, Google still stores it in its cache for a considerable period of time. Anyone who’s smart can simply click on “Cache pages” and retrieve a Saved Screenshot of your page.
2. If most of the searches are professional and don’t reveal stupid things about you, then you’re fine.
3. Run a Google Search for your nickname and see if it connects you to your real self by any means. If it does and there are stuff that you don’t want anyone to see, then you may want to do something. You can delete some information from your previous posts. It might take time for Google’s cache to clean up (like I mentioned before). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This is what I don’t like about Google. I’m scared of sharing so much information with this organization. My business is not their business. Of course, they want all this information so that they can better target their advertisements, from where they generate 98% of their revenue. Anyway, I’ll leave my tech rant out of this post.
Many of us have Sitemeter or something similar installed that collects the location, browser and Operating System specification and certain other data from your computer. Apart from this, the comment system itself stores YOUR IP Address! Giving someone your IP address can be quite risky, if you know what I mean. Most of them wouldn’t do anything with it, but there are some smart people out there who can use it for anything.
If you visit ip2location.com and punch in your IP address, it clearly shows your location. So, even though you might have been very cautious on your blog regarding this piece of information, guess what? One visit to your friend’s blog can let him/her know your location.
You can use proxy servers such as
http://the-cloak.com
to browse your friend’s blogs. Your speed will reduce a bit, pleas be warned.
You can also go to websites such as
http://publicproxyservers.com/
that will give you proxy IP addresses that can be used instead of your real IP address to surf the internet. You need to change your Network Setting in Mozilla Firefox (Tools-> Options->Advanced->Network Settings) from “automatic” to “Manual” and put in the proxy server information from the list. You might take some time to find a server that actually works at a decent speed.
If this is too much of trouble, then you can download a software such a Tor or Jap. You need to closely follow the instructions, which vary according to the type of browser that you’re using.
If you need to visit only a certain blog, then I think the-cloak.com should be enough.
Many of you who work in offices might want to use a proxy server if you have strict internet usage policies. Also, as an added precaution, you can “Edit the Timestamp” so that the post gets published a couple of minutes in the future. This way, the internet police of your company might find it difficult to associate your particular blog with the IP address. You might especially want to do this in case you are abusing your company 
Also, you might want to take a look at this page and listen to this person’s advice. Please be safe. You never know who’s watching you.
Even I have come across instances where I know that people look into Sitemeter and other applications to see where you live. People are very curious by nature. There is this other friend of mine who pestered me a number of times to reveal the URL of my private blog. I ended up making that blog private, scared that he or someone else might come across it. There are some parts of us which we don’t want to reveal and I strongly feel that others should respect that. It’s up to you to draw the boundaries and stay safe.
On Being Disconnected from the World
Posted: November 19, 2007 Filed under: Cell phones, E-mail, Life, Technology, Thoughts | Tags: Cell phones, communication, E-mail, General ramblings, Life, Technology, telecommunications, Thoughts 19 Comments »
It was when I’d gone to a casino about two weeks back that I discovered that the display screen of my cell phone had gone ‘white’. I got a little unnerved and started playing with the slider hoping that everything would be back to normal. No such luck. The screen worked intermittently, granting me the privilege of accessing my phone book when he felt like it. I wasn’t really worried and decided that I would give the customer service a call and they should be able to replace my phone, especially since he’s on a 2 year contract and it’s only been a year since he came into my life. On my way back home, I made the call and the lady informed me that she would send a new battery that should solve the problem.
I waited for 10 days…no battery! Called them up again and someone else informed me that the battery had never been shipped because his warranty has expired. (Wow! Finally I can get disconnected from the rest of the world. Thank you God for listening to me. ). So, I need to get him replaced with another one. I told him that I’ll think about it and ended the call.
Now, he’s expired in that the display screen doesn’t even go white. It just stays blank. He’s dead.
Who wants to get committed so fast? Let me enjoy my new found single status! 
I can’t tell you how happy I’ve been since the past couple of days. No more telemarketing calls, no more unsolicited party invitations, no more of friends calling me to ask me what I am doing! This is like a dream come true for me. I hardly miss my cell phone. The funny thing is that there hasn’t been even a single incident when I’ve felt the need to call anyone. My mom called me up once and I spoke to her over my friend’s phone.
It’s always been like this with me. People who know me will testify to the fact that I’m always in a hurry to end calls. Somehow, I’m more comfortable talking face to face or just e-mailing (thanks to the over reliance on this particular method of communication in the US). I share a family plan with another friend and the total number of minutes that I use every month (including the incoming minutes) doesn’t go over 200 mins. Of course, the weekends and weeknights after 9 pm are free. But even during that time, I only talk to my mom. I don’t text message either.
How did people live without cell phones a couple of years back? No wonder they got more work done! These days, you can’t stick to any deadline because of the outpour of e-mails and calls.
How do I cope with this? Well, I reply to emails ASAP actually. But as for calls go, it depends upon who’s calling me. If it’s work related, I receive the call. If it’s a social calling, I let the voice mail pick it up. After some time, I call back when I feel that it’s safe to do so (totally sure that the party must have gotten over by now) 
P.S. I’m thinking of doing another follow up post analyzing our cell phone behavior.
What’s in my Laptop?
Posted: January 29, 2008 | Author: Ruhi | Filed under: General ramblings, Microsoft, Technology, Google, Cartoons, Social Networking, Life, Thoughts, Wordpress, Windows Vista, Mozilla Firefox, greasemonkey, comics, Facebook, yahoo, E-mail, E-books, GMail, CSS, Themes, Web designing, Software, Programming, Tumblr, social bookmarking, Web 2.0 | Tags: Technology, Thoughts, General ramblings, Life, Blogging, Wordpress, delicious, greasemonkey, flock, firefox, Web 2.0, social bookmarking, digg, stumbleupon, Instapaper, mozilla, browsers, operating system, windows, addons, extensions, userscripts, senduit, reddit, laptops, computers, shareaholic, cocomments | 27 Comments »Amit Agarwal from Labnol recently posted a link to Gina’s article, where she’s listed all the programs that are currently installed in her computer. I have seen many other bloggers prepare such lists too. I spend so much of my time every day, tinkering around with various applications, but have never given them any credit on my blog. So this post is a tribute to all these lovely creatures who improve my browsing experience every single day. It might help you get some ideas or discover some new tools too.
My primary Laptop: Compaq Presario V2000 with Windows XP Operating System
Secondary Laptop: HP Pavilion dv2000 with Windows Vista Operating System
My desire is to own a tablet PC made by Apple. I’ll buy it as soon as it’s released.
I also fester desires of learning how to install a fully functioning Linux OS someday!
Browsers: The social browser Flock- Amazing browser for people who are avid bloggers and social networkers on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr etc. Check out my review here.
Mozilla Firefox version 3 beta 2- Just downloaded it yesterday and I’m in love with their new location bar feature, that pulls out page titles and addresses in two different lines and colors, from your recent browser history and bookmarks!
Here’s a screen shot from the Official Website:
Add-ons and Extensions:
Shareaholic- An extension that lets you submit a page to countless number of social networking sites such as Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Google Bookmarks, Friendfeed, Facebook etc. You can customize the drop down menu to include only those bookmarking sites that you use. You can also email the page you’re viewing. Here’s a screen shot (notice the green button with a drop down list only):
Screenshot: This Flock extension allows you to save webpages (entire, visible portion, selection) and windows (eg. browser, blog, uploader) as .png or .jpeg images. You can save these images to your file system, the clipboard or even send them straight to the photo uploader.
Cocomments: This extension helps me track every single comment that I’ve left on any sort of web page- Be it a website, blog or a channel like Youtube. I get notifications in my browser (in the shape of a small envelope) if there’s a reply to my comment. I find this to be really helpful because the “My Comments” tab at WP.com is very slow and it only shows a certain number of recent conversations. Plus, there’s no other way that I can track my comments left on non-WP.com blogs. All you’ve got to do is install the extension and it takes care of everything!
Here’s a screen shot:
Greasemonkey: What in the world would I Do without this add on?
This is the best thing about Firefox and Flock. Too bad that Internet Explorer people have to suffer! Currently, I’m using the following scripts:
LookitUp2- Quickly look something up in wikipedia, a dictionary or whatever you like (its easy to add custom sites!). The result is displayed directly on the page.
TextareaBackup- Retains text entered in text areas
WordPress Comment Ninja- Respond to comments directly by post and/or email from inside your WordPress dashboard. For WordPress bloggers.
Comment Pre-fill- Fillout comment form fields with a single keyboard shortcut!
Greased Lightbox (v0.15)- Enhances browsing on websites that link to images such as Google Image Search, Flickr, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace, and deviantART
Userscripts.org Rank By Popularity- When browsing scripts on userscripts.org it will change the icon on the left to show how popular a script is. Very useful for focusing on the best scripts.
Mailto 2 Webmail- Open those “mailto:” links in your GMail, Yahoo, AOL etc. email accounts instead of the default Outlook Express.
Yahoo Pipe Cleaner- Removes most of the HTML markup from Yahoo Pipe run output so that it can be cut-and-pasted into WordPress blogs.
Out of these, my absolute favorite is the WordPress Comment Ninja and the Greased Lightbox (when I’m looking at images and want to see the expanded version, all I do is click on the picture and it zooms out. No need to open another link! Cool, isn’t it?
You can also check out this and this, where I’ve prepared a list for other scripts that are very useful.
GoogleDocs Extension: Great stuff for all you Google Fans out there.
From the official website:
Software Applications:
Pidgin- Log into all chat clients and receive new email notifications and lots of other features.
WinRAR- For opening zipped files
DietMP3- compress your MP3 files
TextPad- Works great for CSS/HTML coding etc.
CDisplay- For reading e-comics
Irfanview- Resizes your images and lots of other capabilities
Apart from this, there’s the usual crap that’s worth not mentioning. I prefer to keep the number of applications running at the minimum and have a fetish for keeping my hard disk neat and tidy.
Some other junk that I found over the internet:
Ten Quickfixes to Make Your Windows Computer Run Faster
DownloadmyLink- Free Megashare/Rapidshare file downloader…no need to wait for 60+ minutes or reset your internet connection.
Senduit: Easily share you files- very clean UI
Instapaper: Bookmark those articles that you want to “Read Later” and might not be “Delicious”.