ICICI phishing, gmail security & more

This post has 3 parts: An alert on typical phishing email, link to an important post by Amit Agarwal about how to protect and recover your gmail account and a quick mention of an article in Chennai times which has my 2 paisa worth opinion


1. All of us receive a good number of phishing emails claiming to be from your banks who have accidentally lost some of your account information and need you to confirm the same to them again. Most of us are intelligent enough to ignore such mails and not to part with our account information, but once in a while people do get fooled and tricksters manage to get hold of sensitive account information and promptly misuse it.
By default I ignore such mails, but below one was very close, so felt like giving it a mention. Mail appears to be coming from alert@icicibank.com, it only wants you to verify the recent details and promptly warns you not to give your account ID and password. There’s high chance that unsuspecting net user might just click on the link. However, Gmail promptly classified this as spam, MCafee siteadvisor promptly warned about the unsafe outbound links and lots of spelling mistakes in the mail were a giveaway.

Below tips might sound redundant to net savvy readers, still repeating once for the benefit of others.

1. Its highly unlikely that any bank would suddenly loose your personal information. Bank IT systems are robust enough to have adequate backups and fail-over mechanisms to handle most of the problems. Any communication which asks for your personal information needs to be treated with high suspicion irrespective of how genuine it sounds.
2.Avoid using an email Id which is available in public domain for banking and other sensitive business
3 Point mouse on the link to see where the link is actually taking you.
4. Suspicious links, spelling errors and browser/antivirus alerts should warn you that something is wrong. Even if everything sound genuine, never proceed without a personal verification directly with the bank.

2. Gmail and Google Aps Account Security:
Ace blogger Amit Agarwal says his gmail account got hacked and he could manage to regain control of his gmail account within hours, mainly by following the right procedure with correct information, partly helped by his internet friends who work in Google.

Vijaya karnataka editor Vishveshwara Bhat shares his encounter with hacker in one of his recent editorials-he says "I emailed him from an alternate account and threatened him with legal/police action, hacker promptly replied-'I know how to deal with this. Hacking emails and phishing is my full time business and I've made enough money for 2 generations-if you want your account back pay 700 dollars-non negotiable'..."

3. Chennai Times quotes me on trekking

In another unrelated update, yesterday’s Chennai Times quoted me on trekking. You'll have to excuse me for the poor quality image-TOI's online epaper doesn't provide a better quality screenshot/option to save as pdf. Nothing great boasting abt it-the article by Sindhu Vijaykumar says more and more people are opting to trek out during weekends and quotes CTC founder Peter along with opinions of myself and few others about trekking

Related posts: Deep forest trekking-advise * Skandagiri * eNidhi India Operational Policies * DC quotes me on Windows 7 *