Why am I always posting about Orkut? I donno, I have some affection towards Orkut more than to my wife* (I mean Orkut, the social networking site; don’t think it otherwise…). Thought of an Orkut-free post this time, but something ‘worse’ happened today which forced me to write this one.
Orkut (Google) account getting hacked is not a new thing these days. Have heard many cases of hacked accounts, stolen communities etc etc. This month beginning, one of my cousin’s Google account was hacked, very fortunately he got it back. Met another guy, whose community was stolen. Again, in this case too, he got his community back.
What Should I do, if my account is hacked?
Report it to Google (or this one) immediately. The victims of the above mentioned cases, and many others got their ‘lost possessions’ back, after reporting it to Google in right time.
And remember, prevention is always better than cure. There is no surety that you will get back your account. By, following few steps, you can avoid the chances (and not eliminate, I repeat, not eliminate) of your account being hacked.
- Never run javascripts (Even if those were scrapped by someone in your list, or a close friend).
- Click CAUTIOUSLY on links in scraps, mails etc. Move your cursor to the link, and ensure by checking status bar, that this link takes you to a legitimate site. Check this link to know ‘why’?… this is another resource.
- Avoid (as possible as you can) tiny urls and similar shortlinks. If it is a tinyurl, use this to preview, before being automatically taken to the target site.
- Though optional, always provide a secondary e-mail address. [Check the second comment of this post]
- Never display pincodes, birthdates etc publicly in your profile [Check the fourth comment of this post]. If you are using Hotmail as then these details can be very very dangerous. It is very easy to crack into a Hotmail account using your Orkut profile. As a thumbrule, ‘Never mix Orkut and Hotmail’
- Never click on newsonfocus or merinews links.
- If you are community owner, its better to create another profile (ahem! a fake, or what you call it,
) to OWN & MANAGE your community. So, that even if gets hacked, the chances of retrieval of the account AND community remains substantial. - Beware of fake login pages (Orkut or Okrut, like that).
- Don’t forget to logout of Orkut (Not only Orkut, all sites) after browsing from a cyber-cafe.
One thing Orkut should do to improve the security is, to implement https:// (Use https:// whenever wherever possible) in Orkut server, which was available till last May. Though, it won’t protect you from hackers in Orkut, it will protect your privacy and password while communicating with the Orkut server, as the communication is encrypted (hence the name ‘secure’).
Orkut Anti-Hacking community, is doing a great job and has someone in there with ‘real’ grey-matter. I reccommend this community, and got those last two points from this community.
Always keep in mind, ”No one can cheat (hack) you, unless and until you give them the permission to, knowingly or unknowingly“.
*I am a chronic bachelor of age 24, and ‘wife’ is used to exaggerate things for the sake of fun.
UPDATE:- Suggested Reading, Stolen Orkut Forums, And Ways To Get Them Back
