FROM cyber-hero, Kashima Brown, 29, went to cyber-zero. And it took less than 20 minutes.
Last January (2000), the business analyst who lives in San Francisco tried checking her Yahoo! Mail account.
She was surprised that she could not.
She had logged in 20 minutes earlier.
Thinking that Yahoo was updating her account, she left it alone. Then, she started receiving calls from her friends.
They have received her e-mail message saying that she was stranded in Dublin and needed US$2,000 ($2,800) to get home.
Then, Western Union – a Colorado-based financial firm – called asking if she had attempted to send money to the Netherlands at least twice.
Fortunately, Western Union smelt a rat and had frozen her account.
Kashima is a victim of cybercrime.
She was invited by Internet security expert Symantec to share her experience at a cybersecurity event held for journalists from all over the world at the firm’s office at Santa Monica, United States last Tuesday (March 30).
Back to the Kashima who considers herself tech-savvy.
"I am always the first person in my network of friends to get the newest technology – whether it is the latest cellphone or laptop," the statuesque six-footer told me.
"I was just free with the Internet,” Kashima said. She shopped and did her banking online. She used to upload her videos and photos to the Net, too.
But Kashima made two mistakes: Her PC was not protected with any security software. And she responded to an e-mail from e-payment service PayPal telling her that her account needed to be updated.
She did by clicking on the e-mail link and updating her particulars on the website.
"It looked like an actual PayPal webpage," says Kashima.
It wasn’t.
She fell for a phishing e-mail – a rogue message masquerading as the real thing. And she was directed to a bogus site.
The particulars she supplied was sufficient for a hacker in the Netherlands called Troy – that was all Western Union could tell her – to hijack her webmail account, lock her out and sent out e-mail messages for help.
The hacker had found her Western Union account information among her e-mail messages.
After that, Kashima no longer does her transactions online. She is careful with the websites she visits and has installed Internet security software on her laptop.
"Now, I would physically walk to the post office to drop my payments into the mailbox the old-fashioned way," she said.
She has deleted many of e-mail messages with personal details.
But despite her efforts, more than a year after the incident she still feels its effect on her life.
She tried opening an account two weeks ago with Wells Fargo. She was told that she already had an account.
When a credit account check was done, she was told that she also had another account with Bank of America which was closed because it was a fraudulent account.
One message that Symantec shared was that criminals in cyberspace are business-smart operators with bogus websites that smack of professional design.
Their motivation remains greed – to steal or to dupe others into parting with their money. But the crime does take not place in dark alleys.
And the weapons are not knives or guns.
Crime happens in cyberspace. And hacker tools can be purchased on online black markets much like items in a supermarket.
You have been warned.
Look before you click.