What Went Wrong

Life goes on at the fish landing jetty in Kg.Pulau Gajah, Pantai Sabak, Kota Bharu, Kelantan.

It was at 6.12 AM today July 9, 2010 when I heard the sound of my phone buzzing indicating an incoming SMS. Being a light sleeper I immediately woke up to check the SMS. It must be something urgent for someone to send such a message at this hour.
True enough there was a message from my Virtual Tourist friend Chia BH. He mentioned about an urgent email he had sent to my Yahoo account.
Though still groggy I powered up my PC and immediately opened my yahoo mail. There were two messages from Chia. The earlier one was the shocker that said my Gmail account had been compromised and it was being used by someone to solicit fund since I was purportedly stranded over seas in Scotland. The second one was to tell me why he had to use my yahoo account as using the Gmail account would only alert the perpetrators that his misdeed has been found.
The next step was to open my Gmail email account. Sure enough, they have changed my password and I was unable to open it and I immediately reported the matter to Google to reset the password.
While doing all that at recovering my account, another SMS came in from Pi Bani telling me about the same thing and alerting me of the scam.
My next step was to access my facebook account. Luckily I had used a different password and it opens up with no problem. It wasn't so with my blog Life As I See It... (LAISI) as I had used the gmail account to access it. What a blow to me as this blog is important to me. Without it I will not be able to reach to the many friends and readers who had been following it.
An attempt to reset the password to the Gmail account also met with failure as I have used an email address that was long dormant, a Hotmail account which I have forgotten the password and with so many changes to Hotmail, it became unfamiliar to me. The access to my Hotmail account was also denied. I guess the perpetrators must have reset the password to that account too.
Oh God, to a non computer savvy people like me, such a problem is a monumental one and the techniques toward recovery are laced with hurdles that are difficult for me to surmount.



Here is the email from Chia,

hi zawi...

i recieve this email this morning (july 9th) of which i know is a spam... please inform all your friends in your address book of the compromise in your gmail address... salam and regards...

~chia

*******

--- On Fri, 7/9/10, Mohamad Zawawi Ahmad <mohdzawi@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Mohamad Zawawi Ahmad
Subject: I need your Help Urgently
To:
Date: Friday, July 9, 2010, 5:31 AM

Hello,

How are you doing?hope all is well with you and family,I am sorry I didn't inform you about my traveling to Scotland for a Seminar.

I need a favor from you because I misplaced my wallet where my money,and other valuable things were kept.I hate to ask you for help but I will like you to assist me with a soft loan urgently with the sum of $1,500 US Dollars to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.

I will appreciate whatever you can afford and i'll pay you back as soon as I return, You will help me to send the money through Western union with this details below.

Name: Mohamad Zawawi
Address: 1 William Street, Glasgow, United Kingdom G3 8HT

Kindly get back to me with the transfer details as soon as the transfer is complete. and also get back to me with you account details so i can refund the money immediately I get back home

Your reply will be appreciated. Thanks

Mohamad

I shot back a reply asking Chia to ignore it as I am home in Kelantan.

On facebook I saw a message from Mek Yam in New York.
The one from Mek Yam contains the same appeal.

Mek Yam July 9 at 6:11am

would you happen to be in scotland attending a seminar?

judging from your last status in fb, not likely ya?

but i have to check because i just received this email a few minutes ago, purportedly from you, asking for urgent help. hope you don't mind confirming if the email is indeed from you:

********

Lucky thing Mek Yam was suspicious and not immediately succum to the scam.

Jacqueline Tegju from USA and Rita Ho from Duval, Washington also sent me messages on facebook.
Rita wrote this to me after she had read the messages from the others:

Hi Pak Zawi,

David just advised me to reset my password since I actually chatted with the hacker. You may want to advice all your contacts who received the mail to do the same since it wouldn't hurt and better to be safe than sorry.

I'm sorry this happened to you, not your fault at all and hope everything clears up for you to have your account back soon.

Enjoy the weekend!

Rita

The guy even tried to chat up Rita. Fortunately Rita sensed something was amiss and told the guy that he wasn't really me and the guy stopped the chat.
Other facebook messages came from my friend Shahrir Saadon. Other friends including my ex teacher called to confirm. I guess everybody else with an address in the account received the scam but simply ignore it. As per Rita's advice, please reset your password so as to safeguard yourself from any eventualities. Though Rita sensed it was an amateur job, place take heed as it is better to be safe than sorry.
My attempt to recover the gmail and blogger account is a failure as I could not supply the Google team with the correct information to establish ownership of the accounts. Thus I am compelled to open up a new account for my email with Google. For the blogsite, it will be known as LAISI and the URL is http://zlaisi.blogspot.com.
There will be no new posting at the old blogsite. It will be left to become dormant as an archive since I cant access them or delete them.

Just how did I get into this trouble? It was sheer stupidity on my part as I too fell for this silly scam as per this email. Only difference it it came in my Gmail.

From:

"yahoo-account-services@cc.yahoo-inc.com"

Add sender to Contacts

To:

undisclosed-recipients

GENERATOR

Accounts,Yahoo would shut down all unused Accounts,You will have to confirm your E-mail by fill in your login info below after clicking the reply botton or your Account will be suspended within one week for security reasons.

CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY. VERIFY YOUR FREE YAHOOACCOUNT NOW !!!


* Username: ...............................

* Password: ................................

* Date of Birth: ............................

* Occupation:................................

* Country of Residence:................................

After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconvenience.


Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account before two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Any fool would have noticed that it was a scam. I was much foolish than a fool and I did submit to te request because once I had problem with my blogger account and I attribute that to my failure to conform to the request.
So please all of you who read this, learn this lesson from me and not respond to the request. It will lead you to the same trouble that I went through resulting in many friends to suffer some form of anxiety.
To all of you concerned friends who were affected, I offer you my humblest apology. It was my fault for being so stupid.