Gmail

the hacker

When abusive messages and obscene videos started going out to his friends, the man received frenzied calls from themA 25-year-old software engineer had sleepless nights for a couple of days after his, Facebook, and Instagram accounts were hacked. What’s more, one of his Facebook friends filed a police complaint against him at Nellore in Andhra Pradesh mistaking that he had hacked his Facebook account, and several others on his friend list called him up to ask why he was sending them abusive and obscene messages.It was only later that the techie learnt that he was not the only victim and thathad gone into one of his female friend’s Gmail and Facebook accounts through which he hacked his as well. Prashanth Nani, the victim, works as a software engineer with a reputed MNC on Bannerghatta Road. He is a native of Nellore in Andhra Pradesh and a resident of Southeast Bengaluru.“It all started on Saturday morning for me. I received a message on my Facebook messenger from a childhood friend of mine, a girl who asked me to share my Amazon ID,” said Prashant. He said, he did not think anything out of the ordinary about that as it is shared so friends can watch videos, so he shared his ID with her. “Minutes later, she pinged me back saying that the ID was not working, and that she told she would generate a password reset request to my Gmail which I received,” he said.Prashanth forwarded the mail details on the Facebook chat messenger with the girl. Minutes later, Prashanth could not access his Gmail account as the password had been changed. He pinged his friend asking her why she had changed his Gmail password, but there was no reply.Prashanth then tried to log into his Facebook account, but the password of that too had been changed as his Gmail was linked to his Facebook account. Later his Instagram account too was gone.“I felt miserable for two days as people on my list who had my phone number called me and messaged me asking why I was being abusive on social media. It seems, the hacker had posted pornographic content on their walls especially of girls and addressed them with expletives,” Prashant told Mirror. “The hacker had even messaged all my friends who are girls and they shared his messages over the phone with me,” he added.Even HR staff from Prashant’s workplace called him to ask if he was alright as the hacker had shot a mail to the HR asking for money as he had met with a serious accident.Then Prashanth contacted the girl, and learnt that her Facebook account had been hacked on the previous night (Friday night), and that from her account too, abusive and obscene contents was being posted on her friends’ wall.Prashanth then contacted one of his techie friend Harif who helped him recover his Instagram account, but he could not recover Gmail or Facebook as both the passwords and the user-IDs were also changed. Harif then wrote to Google and Facebook on behalf of Prashanth explaining his plight and requested them to recover his accounts. By then, accounts of at least 12 mutual friends of Prashanth and his childhood friends had been hacked. To save themselves from trouble, Prashanth and his female friend approached the Cyber Crime police and filed separate complaints about the incident.