Phishing
by Christian Kofi Sarpeh and Alomenu Samuel
Kojo snailed home absentmindedly. Dragging his feet like a depressed, broken-hearted teenager. Worry written all over his face. "Kojo what is the problem?" his father, Mr. Lottah asked, rising from his lazy chair where he was reading a journal.
"Father, I lost all my friends."
"Lost your friends? How is that?"
Kojo dropped his school bag and started unbuttoning his school uniform. "Papa, I tried to access my profile on Facebook just to realize I have been locked out".
Mr. Lottah began to smile and relax. Being computer-savvy himself, he knows how a situation like that can be unnerving.
"Son, you can do better than that. You can always request a login reset from the login page. Relax, all is not lost." Mr. Lottah's smile broadened.
Kojo shook his head patronizingly at his father.
"Dad, you don’t understand the gravity of the whole situation yet."
Mr. Lottah's smile dimmed.
"Make me understand it then, son", he said quickly
"Father, my email account is blocked as well."
Mr. Lottah looked a little disturbed, but he quickly regained his composure in order not to alarm his son. He placed a ghost of a smile on his face.
"Once again my son, all is not lost. You can recover your password by correctly answering the security questions you chose when you were creating your email account."
"Father! I beg to differ. All is lost because I saved the answers to the security questions and the question alike in my email folders".
Mr. Lottah’s face fell. Understanding dawned on him suddenly. He quickly place a smile on his face and said "You didn’t lose all your friends actually. You did lose some but only in the virtual world. If not, we would have had 3500 plus funerals to attend."
Kojo smiled thinly, appreciating his fathers attempt to alleviate the sadness he was feeling
Mr. Lottah drew him into a hug and after pulling back he got serious.
"Listen to this son and never forget. You must never in the future click on any link in a message asking you to verify your account by logging into your account from their server. That will cause you to lose very confidential information in the forms of passwords of email accounts and internet profiles, credit cards and any information you entered on that page. And try as much as you can to scan systems for Trojans, spywares and other wares that have spying abilities. Things like that are very easy to do if you know how."
Kojo nodded in understanding. However, his clever mind had a question.
"But how do they fake convincing email accounts of most sites to fool the unsuspecting victim?"
"That is very easy if you know how. You can use a PHP mailer which allows you to forge any email account you desire for your illegal activities. But when the time is right, I will educate you more on this."
"Does it have a name? Ermmm, I mean that info stealing act."
"Yeah. Phishing."
"Fishing!?"
"No, it is spelt with a "ph".
Kojo sighed in relief. Mr. Lottah smiled to himself.
"At least with the Internet you can always start from scratch. Not all the time though."
Kojo smiled and looked into the future imagining how the Internet would change the world. He booted his fathers PC and waited for the process to complete.
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