The Hackers and the Spammers

 July 18, 2012

By Saeed Qureshi

One of my readers, a devout Muslim castigated me for deviating from the path of God and religion and hence according to him, the nemesis came in the form of my breakdown of internet system. He sternly advised me to seek Almighty’s forgiveness for my errant conduct.

I am not aware if the divine forces can be so sensitively revengeful against a humble mortal like me and strike me by ransacking my internet communication system and making it dysfunctional. If at all such a vendetta or curse is to be fallen, it should be doled out to a more deserving individual whose conduct should be egregiously repulsive, and unpardonably sinful than that of mine.

I may be a sinner on a very low or negligible scale but I cannot be equated with a person for instance Bashar- al-Assad who is slaughtering his people as if animals in a slaughterhouse. His nemesis is yet to come.  I have never killed even a sparrow in my life. I have been helpful to the people in need of a help. And I seldom offended or harmed anyone by way of harsh tongue or by a bad deed. I do not claim that I am an ideal or a moral icon. I am a humble person with least mala-fide intentions towards anyone.

So the pious Muslim who warned me of the divine wrath because of my deviation from the religious course might be magnifying or misunderstanding the concept of the divine retribution. Or else he is nurturing a bleak or lurid picture of mine in his mind. Or he was just trying to use the common ploy of the preachers to frighten me from the annoyance of God and even hell fire for some sins that I don’t remember I have committed to earn the internet impasse.

All the aforementioned narration was beside the point. What I wanted to convey is the cardinal point that in this age of breathtaking  technological leaps, the users who are now addicted to it, despite its umpteen boons, can also be stung by it. It is a blessing that can occasionally turns sinister.  

As such it has got nothing to do with the morality or religiosity of a person. The use or misuse of technology in terms of morality can be drummed up by only morons or religious fanatics. Technology and science is neither secular nor religious. Neither has it any code of ethics nor any religious faith to follow.

In one stroke from an invisible and canny hand, my several thousand emails went off the storage, my incoming and outgoing emailing disabled and I remained without any email linkage for days together. This landslide started with a weird yet fake email from the Yahoo that my password has been changed. It also directed me to respond which I did and moments later everything on the screen was frozen with email chunks disappearing like snowflakes.

Except me, everyone else on my list received a weird email detailing my miserable plight in Spain. It stated that I was totally bereft of all the belongings and money etc with the SOS call to the readers to send me the money to bail out from that traumatic predicament.

Some of the caring and distressed friends and well-wishers wanted to confirm if I had really gone to Spain overnight because the previous night we had participated in a Mushaira cum a fund raising event. They wondered how come I could have reached Spain in matters of a few hours.


I do not possess the magic carpet of King Solomon or his supreme powers to control the genies to fly me to that strife-torn yet one of the amazing countries of the world. That caution saved their money which would have gone into the pockets of the mafia of internationals spammers who are past masters in making fortunes everyday through such diabolic tricks and Machiavellian manipulation of technology.

Earlier for quite some time I have been receiving such dubious emails beseeching on behalf of so many other acquaintances or friends who stated  to be stranded in distant lands. They described themselves to be in a state of inertia and misery with no money or even documents to move beyond where they were stuck up. 

Being involved in the internet for ages, I possess a modicum of intelligence or understanding or sense to decipher such emails. I would at once understand that these are spams and money making scams floated by extraordinary clever individuals or groups that excel in sneaking into or stealing the confidential information of other internet users and utilize it with perfect skill and adroitness to their advantage.

However it is not all reprehensive or doleful.  Such dacoity can be immensely productive and rewarding as demonstrated by Julian Assange through Wiki Leaks that unraveled the deeply hidden secrets of intentional deceit, diabolic politicking and the momentous decision making behind the thick curtains of secrecy and stone-walling.

The irony is that despite sophistication in technology, the search engines such as yahoo and Google cannot locate or catch these exceptional masterminds or unbeatable intelligent mavericks. They elude the best of tools and minds to find them and their hideouts. So this odious practice of farce, fraud and forgeries to cleverly swindle and rob the gullible and kind hearted with such mind boggling techniques, would continue unchecked and unabated.

If we cannot over-awe or out-smart such odious happenings for the time being, then let us accept this situation as a vicious and ugly reality and learn to live with it. It would prevail until a more powerful technology is invented to browbeat these ingenious spammers, smart hackers and sharp scam-peddlers. May be my case is a blessing in disguise and can serve as an eye-opener for others to escape such a malady.