When Aishwarya emailed this morning...

It read as follows:

Hi,
how are you doing today? I am sorry I didn't inform you about my travelling to Africa yesterday evening for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Kenya, South Africa and Cote d’Ivoire . It has been a very sad and bad moment for me since yesterday.

As I am talking to you right now, I’m really stranded here in Cote d’Ivore. It happens that I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am now facing a very big hard time here because I have no money on me.

I am now owning a hotel accommodation and feeding bill of $250 and they wanted me to pay the bill tomorrow evening else they will have to seize my bags and hand me over to the Hotel Management, please I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and I will also need $250 to feed and help myself back home next tomorrow or next, so please send me $500 immediately to sort out myself because I am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have any money to feed myself for a day which means I will be starving, so please understand how urgent I needed your help.

I am sending you this e-mail from the city Library in Abidjan here and I only have 30 minutes, I promise to pay back your money as soon as I return home so please use this information below to forward me the money or anything that you can afford right way through Money Gram or Western Union .

RECEIVERS INFORMATION:
RECEIVERS FIRST NAME: Aishwarya
RECEIVERS LAST NAME: Bachchan
RECEIVERS ADDRESS: Immeuble Jaceda Plateau,
RECEIVERS CITY : Abidjan ,
RECEIVERS COUNTRY: Côte d’Ivoire .

Please don’t forget to send to me sender information’s as stated below as soon as the transfer is made to enable me receive the funds.

SENDERS INFORMATION:
SENDERS FIRST NAME:
SENDERS LAST NAME:
SENDERS ADDRESS:
SENDERS CITY:
SENDERS COUNTRY:
MTCN:

Looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible
Best Regards,
Aishwarya Bachchan

Actually, Aishwarya and I went to school together for more than 8 years and ended up discovering each other (thanks to google, of course!) after more than a decade only to find we live less than 20 miles of each other! That was a couple of years back and we've been in touch via all kinds of media since then. So the first thing I did when I read this email was "WHOA!" then I call up Aishwarya at her home number to make sure she's really in Africa before I wire her the much needed money. Guess what, she hasn't even dreamed about the Africa trip yet. It appears someone has hacked into her account and sent out this email. I gave her my share of tips and forwarded the email back to her telling her exactly what has happened.

The email had her actual full name but did not include my name, only my email address. Also, all the dollar amounts had bold face font, then she did not have her usual style of writing and then I had not even talked to her yesterday evening, all of that and more led me to think it might not be her, but I think if I didn't care enough I could have been fooled. So now I want to spread the word... please guys, change your password to something that's not in dictionary and beware of fake Aishwaryas that are going around. Here are some of the tips I had shared last year. But I got to tell you, this email I got violated the second point in this tips post.

Be safe and keep your email account safe!

PS. The name of my friend has been changed to not reveal her identity.