The Sorrows and Joys of Digital World

Written on Thursday, December 21, 2006 by Unknown


It was yet another monday morning but not quite.
Logged into office, tried to sign into yahoo messenger (one of the few important things which i do as soon as i come to office) but to my dismay got "incorrect password" error again and again. Tried logging into yahoo mail, no success here either. Fearing the worst logged into my alternate email account, and there it was, the dreaded mail from yahoo "Your password has been changed".
With all kind of negative thoughts tried the "forgot password" option but it would always throw an error "The information you entered does not match with your profile information"...
The hacker was smart enough to change everything!!!

"Cmon this is just a free mail account, you can get another", i said to myself. But then i just could not gulp the fact that i just had lost a 5 year old mail account with over 100 contacts in messenger.

So what's the big deal???. You can get another for free.
If this is what you are asking, wait till it happens to you. The sorrows of digital world are different.

Anyways surrounded by the gloom i resolved of getting it back, no matter what. Going through the help pages i got a link where i could i mail them about my problem. I got a response immediately and as expected it was an automated reply :(. Frustrated i did a Google and my search string was exactly this "Recover hacked yahoo account". Got to read people's experiences where somebody was lucky to get the account back in a month after number of mail and phone communication with yahoo, while for some, yahoo was not as friendly.

What gave me the ray of hope was this post by a guy who said " The key is to get a live person (not a machine) to communicate with you. Make him believe that account is yours and it's really important for you to get it back" . As for this guy he had mailed them saying he had his children's photos in the mail box and it could be some pervert pedophile hacker downloading them. This worked like a miracle and the yahoo helped this guy to even remember his answer to security question by giving him hints. (Yeah, this guy was able to recover the account even without knowing the answer). The yahoo support guys threw hints like "probably you were watching some cartoon shows while creating this account".

This was enough for me to start onto my "recover yahoo" mission. I mailed them giving all possible kind of reasons why i should have my account back. (The mail makes for hilarious reading now, can not post it here coz has some private information). And believe it or not a person (no machine this time) replied back within 48 hours giving me my new password.
Yep i got my account back in just about 48 hours. Talk about the joy i got after seeing the mail in my mail box. Was i plain lucky. just a little creative...... or perhaps both. :)

If you are one of those poor fellas who have lost their yahoo account (or for that matter any other account) or if you ever get into situation like this, do not lose hope, even if you do not remember any damn thing about your account , of course do not forget your user id ;) . In the ages of machines you do have humans somewhere down the line. Use your skills (and sentiaaps) who knows.... you too might get lucky :)

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Unwinding in Peaceful Pondicherry

Written on Monday, December 18, 2006 by Unknown


You have your own advantages and disadvantages of being in a country of more than a billion people. Frustration of finding hordes of people at tourist places (and not so tourist places) is certainly one of the latter. Considering this my weekend trip to Pondicherry came as a pleasant surprise for me. After all at how many beaches can you drive your bikes to the shores and in fact even to almost middle of the sea, of course i mean driving on jetty . (In case you do not what a jetty means (i didn't know before i went to pondicherry) here is the dictionary definition. Jetty - A structure, such as a pier, that projects into a body of water to influence the current or tide or to protect a harbor or shoreline from storms or erosion. )

Pondicherry is certainly peaceful (Oh yes, you certainly have read this on incredible !ndia advertisements.) Be it the paradise beach or the Auro beach you'll always find only a couple of groups (and of course some couples ;)) apart from you. You do not have never ending queues, neither do you have to shell out a fortune to visit those sought after destinations. Yeah Pondicherry is a tax free UT (union territory, i like this acronym ;) ). The best way to enjoy Pondicherry (as we did) is rent a bike (for a meager 150 bucks a day) and roam around at your convenience. Parking is not a problem (It's a big concern for poor souls like me in bangalore) and neither the petrol prices. A full 10 Rs less than that in bangalore, i wonder if we have more effective Mamta Banerejee, here in pondicherry ;)

Apart from being peaceful and cheap the one thing which sets it apart from other tourist places in India is the surrrounding French aura. The street names (most of them) are all French, and are incredulously clean !!! You have the doodhwala speaking French without attending Alliance Francis classes (no kidding, though am not sure if they also manage the accent). The restaurants serve French and Italian foods (read bland). You see people from more than 30 countries here zipping around in bicycles around the streets of pondy. (no i didn't count them, read it somewhere and moreover they all looked like some Foreigner :P).

Wanna experience Mauritius, France and India (just a touch little far fetched) all in one place Pondicherry is the place to be. Go and pamper yourself.


Photos here http://picasaweb.google.com/vishal.jalan/PeacefulPondicherry

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