What is Data Privacy and why is it an important issue?

The question of whether privacy is a fundamental right is being argued before the honorable Supreme Court of India. It is a topic to which a young India is waking up too. Privacy is often equated with Liberty, and young Indians wants adequate protectio...

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Looking for love on Matrimonial Sites! Watch out for the Fraudsters

On Oct 2014, I wrote a blog titled “Conmen use fake matrimonial profiles to scam prospective grooms seeking arranged marriages” warning cyber citizens on matrimonial scams. Unfortunately, since then it appears that these scams have become common and lucrative.

These scams earned between 4 lakhs to 1.2 crore rupees (6000 – 200000 USD). Victims were women in their 30’s who had posted their profiles on matrimonial portals. They were emotionally blinded and trusted the online relationship.

The scams used in reported cases in The Times of India, July 20, 2017, were custom harassment, gift clearance or urgent need of money due to a financial or medical emergency.

31 year old nurse	Conned to accept a parcel that apparently was to contain 15000 GBP ( approx. 12 lakhs)	Paid Rs 4.2 Lakhs ( 6000 USD) to a fake courier company
40 year woman	Conned to bail her suitor out of a sticky payment at the  customs	Paid 74 lakhs (11000 USD) into several accounts
Young Woman	Conned to bail out her UK based suitor as custom officials had caught him carrying a lot of pounds	Paid Rs 4.8 Lakhs (7000 USD)
35 year old woman	Conned into supporting an allegedly US based suitor out of his financial difficulties	Paid Rs 1.2 Crore  (184000 USD)
40 year old woman	Conned into bailing out her UK suitor due to a sticky payment at customs	Paid Rs 4.65 Lakhs (7000 USD)

There will be a large number of unreported scams as they involve threats of defamation using explicit photos or video’s shared during the relationship.

I would again remind cybercitizens, that conmen actively target you, use social engineering techniques to gain your trust, and know how to hide themselves on the Internet. These conmen are often difficult to trace or it is simply too expensive to do so.

My recommendation is to use common sense when in an untrusted and unverified relationship. Any request for money should sound a loud buzzer in your brain. Do not also share content of sexual nature which could later be used against you.

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Disgruntled Driver asks Share Ride Cab Company OLA to Pay Ransom for Kidnapped Passenger

A doctor called a shared ride cab to drive him to the private hospital where he worked. The shared ride arrived on time, but instead of taking the doctor to his destination, the driver threatened the doctor and kidnapped him.  The OLA cab driver, ...

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Are my password freely available on the Internet? Four actions that can minimize damage

Frequently we hear of large data breaches from email, social networking, news and other types of websites which we are members off.  Many of us may have been challenged by the site owner to change our password when the site suffered a breach and would even have received a breach notification email.

It would however be useful to have a service which could tell us if our passwords were available in plain text online, anytime we wished. The good news is that a security blogger Troy Hunt has set-up a site http://haveibeenpwned.com/   Here you could enter your email id (a common login credential) and find out if the corresponding password was exposed on breached sites.  The bad news is that it covers only data breaches where the hacker has dumped the compromised list of passwords on paste sites such as PasteBin. This represent a small fraction of the passwords exposed and in all probability allowed a window of time for the hacker to gain access to your account before the breach was uncovered. It also allows anyone (friend, foe, bully, ex-partner, relative, competitor and colleague) who knows your email id to check for the password, and selectively target you.

My advice to all Cybercitizens in general but more specifically after you discover that your password has been exposed is to”

1.    Never reuse that exposed password and to never reuse password on multiple sites. A single exposure can have a cascading effect in the compromise of your online assets. If you have used the same password on multiple sites then quickly change the password on all of them.

2.    To use two factor authentication which a large majority of sites offer to limit the use of disclosed passwords

3.    To change your passwords once every 3 months to limit the exposure window. In large dumps the hacker may take time to target your account and if you have changed your password by then, you would get lucky

4.    To quickly change passwords once you are aware that there has been a breach

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