A mysterious email and a split second mistake Thats all it took for internet gangsters to hijack my life. By. Jane Corbin. Updated. BST, 1. 5 January 2. Seven at night on the Friday before Christmas and I was rushing to meet a deadline. With less than an hour to finish a documentary I was working on, my fingers were flying over my keyboard as I wrestled with the script, phone calls and emails with a researcher abroad while watching multiple TV screens in the cutting room and talking simultaneously to people around me. Suddenly an alarming email popped into my Yahoo mailbox from Yahoo itself, saying my account was about to be shut down unless I confirmed all my details with them. Many people fall victim to phising when they receive hoax emails appearing to have been sent from a legitimate source It looked authentic the graphics, the text, the disclaimer at the bottom were identical to the ones used by Yahoo even some of the details about my account were accurate. I panicked, distracted by all the activity around me, worried I would lose all the precious material in my emails. So I did what I never should have done. I filled in all the boxes, including my password, and pressed the enter key. Within a minute my screen went blank, my electronic lifeline was severed and the nightmare began. I had become one of thousands of victims of phishing the word is a combination of fishing and phreaking, which means breaking into a phone system. Phishing refers to electronic bait put out by criminals to catch financial information and carry out fraud by using your computer passwords. Within seconds of pressing that enter key, a message written by the hackers but under my name went out to everyone in the computerised address book attached to my email account. I had become one of thousands of victims of phishing the word is a. Within a minute, phone calls started flooding in from alarmed contacts who had received the message. I did not know at first what they were talking about the hackers had changed my password to shut me out of my computer. The first call came from an MP whose name begins with A and was top of my address list. He was in his car and had received an email on his Black. Berry supposedly sent by me, saying I was in trouble in Spain and urgently needed money wired to me. The same email and text was sent out in my name to nearly 1,0. I am in a critical situation in Madrid the emails said, all my money got stolen in the hotel where I lodged due to a robbery incident I want you to help me with a loan of 1,5. It went on to say that the hotel phone lines had been cut and I did not have my mobile with me this was to stop people trying to check if the story was true. Being the victim of phishing can be very distressing and stressful. The message was unconvincing of course the grammar was wrong, the English stilted but as I discovered later many people thought it really did come from me and some emailed back asking where to send the money. My life was in chaos as calls continued round the clock from Afghanistan and India, from Africa and Washington, from anxious friends and people I knew as a journalist working internationally. Several Army and security people joked that they might have believed the email if it said the Taleban had kidnapped me in Kandahar. But defeated by a spot of bother in Spain
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