You might give away your e-mail password in a platter!! How?

Man, Man, Man, Dude, Dude, Dude... I just missed out giving away my password to some stupid hackers. And those hackers are so so stupid and I will tell you how they have set up the entire game!! I am so busy that most of the times I am not much attentive and like to do things fast, but this time around a little attention saved me. Next time onwards I will be a lot more attentive.

E-mail is such an important thing and people have so much important information stored in an e-mail address. Numerous other login information, bank information, personal information and even credit card information. Moreover people use e-mails for password recovery. If anyone hacks your e-mail he can get your facebook password and all other passwords just by clicking on the small forgot password link!!

Now, lets have a look at the plot!!!

I get an e-mail from an E-mail Address noreply-alert@yahoo.com which seems like a Yahoo! e-mail address. Below is what the e-mail is about:-

So here you may notice that they are using a yahoo.com e-mail not yahoo-inc.com e-mail which are officially used by Yahoo! I worked in Yahoo! for sometime and I had one of those e-mails. Generally the e-mails which you receive from Yahoo! are customercare-en@cc.yahoo-inc.com and do-not-reply@yahoo-inc.com. But yet it is possible to send you e-mails from these e-mail addresses or even your own e-mail address!!! You don't know how? Its very easy. They will just use the PHP mail() function and use any e-mail which they want to send from in the sender's field. If you do not know any programming and don't believe that, just contact me and I will send an e-mail from your e-mail address to your e-mail address, just to show you how it works. So never trust the information which you get through an e-mail or I would say trust with caution and do not reply and give away any sensitive data through those e-mails.

Once you click on the Click here link you are redirected to a page which looks Much like the Yahoo! login page!! Yes not completely like. Below is how it looks, but 70% of intelligent people would not notice the small things I have pointed out in the image below:-

After I filled in the form with some false username and password, and clicked on the sign in button, I was redirected to the Yahoo! e-mail page as expected. Most of the people know that you need not sign in again if you are already signed in, but in a hurry they might put in their correct username and password just to see what is in it for them. And then they do not even realize that their username and password has been saved in the database of these buggers.

You might wonder how they made a page like this. But I assure you don't need great skills to copy the front end of a web page. You just copy and html and css and upload it in your website. These guys did the same and just linked the form to their database. This means whatever you enter in those fields gets stored in their database after which they smoothly redirect you to the Yahoo! e-mail page which you are already logged into!!

So how to be safe??

• Always look for suspicious things like this e-mail. Yahoo! never sends you a stupid e-mail like that saying that you have incoming e-mails. If you have incoming e-mails they would come to your mailbox.
• Moreover never login or give any information into a page which in a different domain than the one in which you had opened your account.

This is the website which has played this silly game - http://www.appdroplet.com/. We do not expect people who know programming to use their brains in a wrong way, but these buggers did. They seem like a good startup, but do you know consequences these kind of stupid adventures have to their business. They might be blocked by all ISPs. They might be blacklisted by search engines. They might even end up in a lockup and will never get any sort of funding or even bank loan if people come to know about what kind of practices they follow. These are far consequences. All their customers will cancel contracts with them and they will not get any new customers.

Biking, my passion since a decade.

I have been biking since I was in college. It was a passion which started with cycling and then biking. My first bike was a Pulsar 150 which was well maintained although it was well exploited!

Speed was so thrilling and pulled up the adrenaline level so much, that we headed to the highway every now and then, when the speedometer seldom went below speeds of 100km per hour. At some points of time the pointer kept flickering near the 120 kmph mark, as pulsar 150 does not go more than that. At such speeds, it feels like you are going to fly off the bike, and yes you would if you leave the handle for a second. And in the turns, its so exciting when bike bends to such a level that your knees almost touch the ground.

Its not only about speed, there are also those hilly roads and difficult terrain where you cannot fly fast. Even riding in those places has their own joy. The round swirling and narrow roads, the mountains on one side and the ditch extending down to the valley on other. The chilled temperature and the breeze, along with the scenic beauty give you the ultimate experience. All you need to do is just move at speeds of 40 to 50 kmph, enjoy the views and breath the fresh air.

Also one in a while, we have those endurance trips where we ride 600 to 800 kms a day and go huge distances in the bike. This is all about pushing yourselves to the limits, be awake and keep driving. You really enjoy the drive till a certain point but then it becomes a bit monotonous, your body starts paining (especially neck, back and eyes. But then when you reach the destination and then again come back it is a great satisfaction which remains for a long time and also gives you a lot of bragging rights.

It the wonderful combination of the man and the machine and the passion the man has which makes the ride really enjoyable. Biking means a lot to me as I enjoy each moment of riding and have a deep friendship with the machine!

This post is an entry to the Indiblogger Castrol Contenst. I always use Castrol Engine Oil in my bike, and its the best. If you are a biking fan like me, Like Castrol in Facebook at this link - www.facebook.com/CastrolBiking