CANNOT ACCESS YOUR ACCOUNT!

The message in red kept appearing on my screen and it was freaking me out.

 I entered the username and password for the n^th  time; and waited fingers crossed.

Username: *************

Password: *******

And there again was the dreaded warning ­– “The username or password you entered is incorrect”.

This could mean only one thing my life has been hacked!  Not literally of course; but being 'virtually' hacked is no less life threatening. Every time I'm shut out of my accounts, including the social networks, it's as if I lose my 'second life' and I start worrying about how unsafe we are all the time in the cyber-world. 

Perhaps I should have been used to the red alert by now: my system has been hacked several times in the past. It's the thought I can do nothing about it that 'kills' me. Nothing seems to help: neither the best of anti-virus programmes nor the strongest of passwords created with expert advice - mixing up the upper and lower cases, inserting numbers between letters and not using your boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s name.

To think of it – how will I or anyone be safe online when hacking lessons are being given for free! And let me tell you one thing- it’s not that difficult; with two or three tries even you can be an expert hacker. And the worst is kids and teenagers learn this, improvise on it, and may be invent new methods of hacking and go around hacking people’s just for the heck of it. Get hold of someone’s IP address and you have full access to that system and its contents.

We are so dependent on net these days. We routinely go through banking transactions, pay bills, book tickets, recharge mobile phones and do a lot of shopping online freely using our debit/credit cards for the prupose. And before we know it, we've become the teenage hacker's newest victims.

So, do we just throw up our hands and watch our identity being stolen? As someone who’s often been a victim of hacking, I do have some advice for you. For whatever it’s worth, invest in a good anti-spyware, pop-up blocker, activate your firewall, zonealarm is supposedly really good and free of cost; avoid going to insecure sites and mark fake emails as spam or delete immediately may be that would reduce your chances of being the cyber-crime-victim.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do, salvaging what remains of my cyberlife. I’ve been hacked, remember?

V- day again!!!

It is that day of the year again, when you start feeling intimidated by all the love-in-the-air stuff. Oh yes!!! its valentine’s day- february 14^th.Nevertheless, the countdown started way before... rose day leading to propose day then the chocolate day followed by teddy day, promise day, kiss day and not to forget the hug day.

And how did I come to know of this?

My friends, of course...they wished me; and as long as we have sms offers none of these silly days would ever be forgotten.

This time the Valentine’s Day was announced in advance because of the countdown days I mentioned before and so did the excitement build up. On chocolate day one of my dear friends distributed five stars; on kiss day- we passed on kisses; on hug day- we hugged each other and so on. But by the time the big day arrived people lost their interest- guess it’s out of fashion now a days...so everyone carried on with their routine classes and the unexpected happened when we were surprised by the sumptuous dinner served before us in the “mess”- poori chole, curd rice, khichdi, ghulabjamun, achar and frymes.

How good was the mess food?

Generally ok types but like I said before it was the unexpected quality and quantity of the food which pulled us towards the dining table. We immediately called back everyone who were planning to go out and have good food on Valentine’s; sat together and were totally satisfied.

Flashback: I remember the first time when we decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day- that too with one of my (girl) friends whom we call teddy. We were so jobless that we went out; first to a temple, got flowers for each other and then for dinner. We thought we were missing out on the fun all the couples were having- the chocolates, the cards, mushy movies, gifts; and this was our way of doing it in a different way...

Now I can say even this Valentine’s Day was definitely special for a hosteller.