It can happen to you too!

By now, I have been using the Internet for almost 8 years and considered myself pretty smart from a security point of view. Because I never clicked on links I received in emails, I considered myself safe from password thefts, until a few weeks ago.

I started receiving emails from a domain named GoDaddy.com

At first I thought it was some kind of a porn website, as the name implied, and ignored the emails by deleting them.One day while I was having a look at my online credit card statement, I noticed a transaction of 20 USD which had been debited from my credit card by a certain company named GoDaddy.com

That set the alarm bells ringing in my head. I quickly opened my browser and visited GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy happens to be one of the biggest domain name providers of US. I had never even heard of GoDaddy.com let alone doing a 20 USD transaction. Now I knew why I was receiving those unexpected emails from GoDaddy.com. I noticed from my credit card statement that the transaction had been done through PayPal. PayPal is a leading web based, online payment solution company which allows you to make payments to any one in the world using your email account.

The credit card which had been used was listed as the primary source of funds in my PayPal account. So I concluded that it was my PayPal account's password that was stolen. I logged into my PayPal account and as expected I found the 20 USD transaction listed in the transaction history.

The next question which came to my mind was how did some one know what my password was?

Any way, I changed my PayPal password and considered myself safe once again. I called GoDaddy and asked them to cancel the transaction. The amount was refunded and the case closed. Well enough.

A few days later I opened my gmail account and wanted to create a filter in my gmail account. I noticed that there was a filter which was directing all email from the domain GoDaddy.com to an email address on the domain aol.com

This was another shocker for me. Who created this filter? Finally the reality dawned on me.

The person who stole my PayPal password, noticed that my email address was sjunaidn@gmail.com

He tried his luck and used my PayPal password with my gmail account. As expected, my gmail password was the same as my PayPal password. So he had no trouble logging into my gmail account and directing all emails from GoDaddy.com to his own email address.
That way I would never see any email from GoDaddy.com and would never know about any transactions funded by my credit card.

Luckily the guy who created the filter was not IT savy and created the filter inaccurately, much to my relief. As a result I did receive emails from GoDaddy.com but as mentioned in the beginning, I just ignored them. The bottom line was that because all my password of major email accounts and my financial accounts were the same, by just stealing one of them, the thief had access to all my private information and most important of all my financial information.

Once again I changed my Gmail account's password. But I was always worried that it can happen once again. I still have not discovered as to how did the thief steal my password. I have never clicked on any links I have received in emails. I never wrote down my password any where on paper or on a file. Who ever did it was nice enough to only whisk away 20 USD. He could have done a lot more damage if he had wanted, without even me knowing about, it until it would have been too late.

Lesson:

In today's world, we have multiple password to manage at different places. What is the way out? Keep all eggs in the same basked only to loose all of them at once?

Finally I decided to use a password manager. A password manager is a software which remembers your password and keeps them safe from theft by encrypting them. So you no longer need to have one password for all your accounts. You can have multiple auto-generated password which can be 32 characters long for each of your account. The password manager can remind you to change the password every n weeks, months or days. It can also generate strong 32 bit passwords, saving you the trouble of coming up with a password every time you want to change one. I found a very good one by just doing a google search. The entry in the top of the search result was what I decided to use.

The name of the software is Kee Pass. It is freely available and can be downloaded from its website.

http://keepass.info/

You can also put instruct the software to visit the login page and then press the auto-fill button to automatically type in the password for you. It virtually saves you from the hassle of remembering multiple passwords and entering them at different places.

Another good important piece of software I found was FireGPG. FireGPG allows you to encrypt even your web based emails and send it across. Once the recipient receives the email, he decrypts the email using FireGPG. So even if some one does open up your email account by stealing your password, all your emails will be encrypted and would make no sense to the thief.

FireGPG , as evident from its name, is only available for FireFox.

Hope I my experience would be of use.

Kind Regards

Life Cycle of a Desi migrant. Australian Born Confused Desi

WARNING! Any reference to any being might be thoroughly and absolutely intentional.

Recently, I heard that a person (whom i had never met) told one of my friends that he would not go back to Pakistan because he is scared that he might get diseases, mosquito bites etc., I said, excuse me! That guy came to the Australia just 7 yrs ago and he has already become super sensitive to diseases and mosquito. What crap is that ? This is insulting himself!!

From my understanding, a desi wants to settle abroad for ONE reason. LAZINESS. Most of the people get used to the laid back way of life :) weekends, long weekends and sabbatical. :)) Almost 90% of desi developers would agree that the job they do can be done by anyone who has completed decent education levels (say +2). You don't need BE/MCA/MS to build the crappy software.

Interestingly I could see 3 phases in any desi's life (whether they live in US/UK/Europe/Australia) For convenience and clarity I m using Australia.

Phase - I - Symptoms

Landing in Australia.,

1. Becomes very homesick, calls home twice a day (Consistent source of income for telecommunication companies).
2. Run around for desi food.
3. Thinks all the females are chicks as shown in english movies.. gets the first hand experience of macho people.
4. Asks for bus routes.
5. Can be located in malls with popped up eyes.
6. Looks for 'S' sized T shirt in the boy's section.
7. Looks at all the cool cars as if he could swallow with eyes.
8. Converts every spending dollar into rupees.
9. Roams every bit of Safeway/albertson/longs.
10. Tries to cook at home.

Phase - II - Symptoms

Settles in a bit.

1. Has multiple calling cards and knows which one to use, factoring time and day :) By this time calling home frequency dries down, may be weekly once/twice.
2. Have a real white nike/adidas hike shoes.
3. Discusses with friends about the car to buy. (Everybody in the office will know that our man is trying to buy a car).
4. Settle for a Civic / corolla, since they are best desi cars.
5. Buys a costlier card.
6. Starts to compare Pakistan-Aus for every petty thing
7. Crib about the cashiers in stores, compare them with Pakistani petty store owners.. how quick they were in counting chillers.
8. Every month, checks the balance and equate it to what it can buy in Pakistan.
9. Look for exotic locations with in city/ (you know wot i mean rite?).
10. Starts asking for 'Bud'.
11. Starts searching for a bride from Pakistan and gets married.
12. Scans every weekly supplement sale and garage sales in and out.

Phase - III - Symptoms

Real confusion begins here..

1. Drops all the calling cards, stick to a phone line. Says line has better clarity.
2. Thinks about getting a bigger/powerful car
3. Starts spending weekends mostly at home and Frequently visits jacuzzi
4. Pastes the country's flag on car
5. Wonders whether he should apply for a permanent residency.?
6. Asks the guys whether he would get a job if he goes to Pakistan ;) (Welcome to reality dude)
7. Tries to affiliate himself to the local groups (Non desi groups, to be specific)
8. Watching Indian movies/wearing Pakistani dress becomes a fashion statement
9. Suddenly, opportunity becomes oppor-tune-ity! Pakistan becomes Pachistan!! often becomes of-ten !!!
10. Tries to talk in mother tongue with kids.. gets shocked when they refuse!
11. Thinks about going back to Pakistan.. always., in fact it becomes a thread in the mind that runs in the background!!

Do you have your own desi observations ;) ??

PS: I received the above article in an email and after certain modifications, I have posted it on my blog. I absolutely give all credits to the original author of the humorous and hilarious article. Please let me know, if you know who authored the article.

Finally I am a Master!

The result was announced on the 18th of July 2007 for the Autumn semester. Much to my relief, I had cleared all subjects and finally I am a Master of science in Inter-networking from the University of Technology Sydney.

The Inter-networking degree is a one and a half years long course which can be upgraded to an extended degree by studying additional four subjects. I chose the extended option and studied four additional subjects.

The M.Sc Inter-networking program is a specialist course which emphasizes on setting up Wide Area Networks(WANS) and Local Area Networks (LANS). The lab equipment is provided by Cisco Systems Inc. Most of the degree is hands on practical work using Cisco Routers and Switches. Some subjects have no lectures at all and are purely based on lab work which is why the exams are also mostly lab based practical exams. Though, some subjects do have written components as a part of the over all assessment.


The cost per subject as of today is $2700 AUD, which is slowly increasing every semester. Taking sixteen subjects would result in a bill of $43,200 AUD. This is a huge amount but worth it. Plus you need to add the cost of living which can be roughly $1000 AUD per month.


My stay at UTS has been a very positive experience and has given me skills which will help me a lot in the booming job market of Australia.