Security threats to your online banking account ....

And how to avoid a disaster --

Five days back, I got a mail with subject line saying -

"Update Your Hdfc NetBanking Account Otherwise it Will Get Blocked"

To any unsuspecting customer, this might sound like a warning message and they are tempted to read the mail which has come from http://www.hdfcbank.net. The mail has normally the following content:

---------------

Important Notice :

In the last few weeks, our Online Banking Security team has observed multiple logons on your Internet Banking Account, from different Blacklisted IP's, therefore been blocked, to prevent further unauthorized access for your safety. we have decided to put an extra verification process to ensure your identity and your Internet Banking Account Security.

Click on for your NetBanking Online Access.

http://www.hdfcbank.com/1/2/securityaccess/precaution/internet-banking/

Security Advisory,
HDFC Online Banking

*Important*
Please update your records on or before 48 hours, a failure to update your records will result in a temporary hold on your funds - it's one more way that HDFC makes your online banking experience better.

© HDFC Bank Ltd. All rights reserved
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The mail opens with the term important notice and it goes on to explain that as HDFC always thinks for your betterment, they will go to any extent to save your customer information. It also instills a sense of fear that someone is trying to hack your account and thus you need to update your login details. A link is provided and to make things look serious they have also added the copyright symbol.

For most of the customers who have little time to go through these kind of mails and are very loyal to the bank and are not very net savvy, this might sound completely unsuspecting. And they might even go the link and update their login details. Having worked for long on auto-surfing sites and common phishing techniques, I knew what it was. (We tried the same technique to dupe some of our friends for their Yahoo passwords to win a challenge by the same method and that too some 6 years back). So, having sensed the motive of the person this time I ventured out to collect as much information as possible on the source of the mail and attacking site. I even provided HDFC bank the whereabout with full contact details (yes full contact details) of this person but I am not sure where they will take some action or not. Sometime I do feel that like our people, our institutions also are not very techno-savvy. Banks have adapted IT but more in a way to fulfill the existing norms.

The modus operandi and how to avoid it?

Most of these phishing mail contains a link which opens up the home page of the target website (your bank, email id, online trading account, etc). The next is that they'll ask you to log-on with your existing user details and once you sign in, it will again re-direct to the target website as if nothing has happened. Now, the trick is that the page sent to you is a replica of the home page of Hdfc bank (in this case) and the moment you enter your login details there, it send the detail to the email of the hacker. If you doesn't smell anything then by the time you'll make your next transaction, someone might have transferred all your money to some account overseas specially set up for these things.

The risk involved -

For the record, most of our bank companies allow fund transfers only between selected accounts so it's not possible to transfer funds to some unsolicited accounts. But wait, there are other elements to it like your credit card number. If you think that what if they get the card number? they still don't have the expiry date or CVV. Comeon! you are living in 2008 where the processors have speed of 3 Ghz. It takes hardly an hour to crack a 3 digit CVV code (do the maths, it's only 1000 combinations) and everybody knows that a credit card expires within 3-5 years so that gives only upto 60 combinations (12 months, 5 Years). So one hour and everything is gone. Even if the hacker can't take away everything, just imagine that if he/she tampers with your account and transfer all the money to some 2-3 accounts linked to your account or donate the money to let's say Prime Minister Relief Fund? It still mean a lot of trouble for you.

Role of Mr. Harriot Balmer and Kim Pouncy -

The chase finally lead to two names who shares the same phone number and address and are most likely to be the partners in the crime. The phishing link in the mail leads to a website http://thebestteam.org which is registered in the name of Mr Harriot Balmer and the registration details included a phone number and address. The number lookup revealed the owner's name as Kim Pouncy who is also a resident of Graham.

Address - Harriot Balmer, B. E. S. T, Street1: PO Box 742, Graham, Washington, 98338, US.
Contact Number - 253 - 847 - 0231
Number registered to - Kim Pouncy, 24604, 47th Ave E, Graham, WA - 98338

I updated HDFC bank's information security team with all the details I had but even after 24 hours, nobody has replied. I am wondering that how many people fell prey to this phishing attack by Balmer's and Kim's pair? Though I can't generalize it but quiet a few of the institutions in India won't be able to pass even simple online security tests. If nothing has happened till now then it's a proof of a simple fact that "GOD EXIST". But at the same time, it's also equally true that "God help those who help themselves".

Dreaming about a house? Forget it for the time being..

Where the property prices are headed? Sub-prime is a big worry in US now and the way Indian Real Estate sector is heating up, I see lot of people postponing their plans of buying a dream house. Who knows may be 5-6 years from now, you get them cheap but on the other hand who knows whether after 5 years you will be able to afford a 700 sq ft 1 bhk flat even in the suburbs?

Rajpura is a small sleepy town in Punjab about 30 kms from Ambala and 50 kms from Chandigarh. It was a quiet little town till 7-8 years back and then the real estate boom happened. My engineering college was around 150 kms from Ambala which was the closest railway station as not all trains stop at Rajpura. So to reach Patiala you have to get down at Ambala and take a bus from there. The highway is really nice and on the sides you can see the greenery that Punjab and Haryana are famous for. Along the wide spreads of greenery you can spot some Gurudwaras with a hint of gold on them (I think there are a couple of those on the way). The deductive logic tells you that the land is fertile and people are rich. Silently they also tell you the story of the thriving NRI community. If the gold on the dome of the gurudwaras are not enough, then the numerous Western Union Money Transfer outlets will complete the logic.

The land is fertile, people are rich and every other family has a NRI settled abroad sending dollars back home. What does all this mean? The answer or rather the question came to me in the form of advertisement of Parsvnath builders. I keep hearing about this company and have seen their hoardings all over the Delhi - Ambala highway a couple of years back. With utmost curiousity a visit to their website tells the other end of the story about the skyrocketing property prices. The city is just like another small town with not very sophisticated infrastructure. Some of the Express trains does not stop at the station and many buses from Ambala take the bypass route to Ludhiana or Chandigarh. The only distinction is that the city is very close to NH 1 which for most of the stretch running around Rajpura is a six lane super highway. But wait, the road which connects the city with this highway is a 2 lane, poorly maintained one.

Can you believe that a 4000 sq feet house can cost you 62 lakhs... Yes, 62 lakhs in Rajpura. The price tag may look a tad costly but the same size flat in Mohali or Chandigarh will require you to shell some 5-6 times more than that (3-4 Crores). Looks like a good bargain right? Let's try to draw some more comparisons. After recent crash in the housing prices in US, with this amount of money (4 Crores) you can buy a house built on half an acre of land with a beautiful kitchen garden and you will still be left with enough money to spend on beautification. The quality of life will ofcourse be better than any other city in our country. In fact in some of our metros, it's worse than a class II or class III town. The roads are congested, the streets are littered and there are all sorts of dangers lurking by. And the price that you are paying for is a house located around 20 kms from the closest suburb of Chandiagrh (which itself was a sleepy town some 10 years ago). Factor the rising petrol prices and you'll see that it's all a lot overpriced. (Of-course you won't if you have that much locked in some account waiting to be spent and you fall for the advertisement which promises you so many things)

Our economy is on a boom and people can afford to pay that much but what will happen if it slows down. I keep hearing that "consumption will drive our economy" but for how long? In simplistic sense to buy these kind of house, people have to borrow money. If the people are on the producer side, they will raise the prices of their produce, if they are on the consumer side they will reduce their consumption of other things. In both cases the consumption will drop. Everything boils down to demand and supply and as long as people keep snapping up these shiny villas even for sky high prices, builders will keep churning out projects like these. Bloggers like us can cry but nothing will happen and the question will remain a question that when will I be able to buy a thing like that with my own money?

These are surely changing times (Not only for Rajpura of-course) .

Which Team to cheer for in Indian Premier League??

Zone wise, I should be cheering up for Kolkata team because I belong to that zone. Dhoni was an year senior to me in my school and I treat him more like an inspiration (not for cricket but rather for his money making prowess and why not? none of his classmates have made even a million dollar till now and look at him..) so that gives me a reason to root in for Chennai team. My cricketing heroes are Sachin, Sehwag, Dravid, Kumble and Yuvraj so that give me reasons to watch matches including any of these players (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Mohali). For the pure pleasure of cricket I would like to see Afridi, Gilchrist, Symonds and Gibbs playing for the same team so that makes it 7 out of 8. Jaipur has Shane Warne but I don't know how he fares in this boom boom format.

So 7 teams to support but at the same time, I would never want Mcgrath to get Sachin out on duck, I would never want to see Kumble trapping Sehwag LBW or Mohd Kaif plucking a brilliant catch of Yuvraj Singh off a Shane Warne delivery. I wouldn't want to see Ishant Sharma celebrating after uprooting the stumps of Dhoni and VVS Laxman congratulating Andrew Symonds for a brilliant run out. I don't want to see Dhoni shouting "come on Murali" from behind the wickets when Yuvraj hits Murali for a boundary.

What to do, whom to cheer for? This IPL is surely giving a lot of options (but who needs all these options). Some even say that this one event is going to change the history of cricket. May be, but the best option left for a cricket fan like me is to hopelessly follow some of the matches with no emotions involved, no India taking on Australia or Pakistan and nothing like South Africa choking up in a big match. To Keep the boredom away a bucket of popcorn and a can of Pepsi might prove useful.

Mere 25% of Indian Graduates...

"ARE EMPLOYABLE"... The statement is not coming from me but rather from a senior level executive (Jeffrey Fuller, principal advisor of Human Capital, a consulting arm of Mercer) who says that out of the total graduates only 25% of them are employable. Link to the mint article here

Two possibilities -

1) Perhaps they are not counting all those who are going to IT, ITES & BPOs companies (may be because you don't even need to be a graduate to get a job into some of these companies or these companies have realized this long back that to defend their margins and to keep the salary mix low, they need to hire those who does not really feel that they are employable. So whatever you give them as salary they will be more than happy to accept). May be while defining employability they might have forgot that there are enough BPOs (either around or in the startup pipeline) to employ every man woman and child by 2020 (the 'year' is made up ofcourse by me)

2) The survey which forms the basis of this observation (if there was any) might be conducted by some of those belonging to the other 75% and in order to prove that they are worthy of their jobs, they are coming out with these ridiculous numbers.

See if the first is a possibility then it proves the second point right??

Cost of Failure..

Q - What is the value of Quality?

Ans - The price that you pay for bad quality (litigations, law suits, product failures, burning investments on bad products etc etc.)

Well to simplify this thing, if Dhoni fails in the IPL, the price that India cements will have to pay for the failure is Rs 6 crores. So whether their decision to pick Dhoni was a quality decision or just a mad rush of blood in the mind of some cricket obsessed board member, only time can tell.

Meanwhile, it will also be point of interest to see the movement of stock prices of India Cements (the company who got the Chennai Franchisee of the IPL).

HDFC Standard life Advertisement

I see hundreds of ads on a daily basis (thanks to Chennai which is really a poster city) and this one particularly caught my attention. The only thing which comes to my mind is "Cleverly Simple". The advertisement successfully drives the point home in a very simple manner.

Will also post a Kingfisher Airlines print ad which really amused me a lot. I looked for it on the internet but was unable to get it and my poor camera is out of battery. That ad is a good example of lifestyle marketing.

It's decided now, 12th May, Hyderabad

I finally got the job offer from Infosys on 6th of this month which says I will be an Associate Consultant - Enterprise Solutions from 12th May onwards. The training place will be Hyderabad. I was going through some blogs about Hyderabad campus and found that though it's not as big as Mysore DC but still, it's not far behind. Check this out... (The images take some time to load but they are good).

So the countdown has begun with less than 90 days to go.

"IT Mein Jaana Hai"

With slowdown worries round the corner, everybody is slamming IT companies these days (some has even made it a point to bitch about IT twice/thrice a day). Nobody is willing to give them a chance and the funny thing is that during these 'defining' times, I am going to start my career with an IT company. People are now saying all kind of things about IT people like they are responsible for soaring real estate prices, for higher salaries and for plastic money. Some even go to the extent of saying that they are responsible for cultural change. Anyways, it won't be surprising if politicians start blaming them for increasing poverty, unemployment as well as inflation.

Even after all this hammering and battering, recently I asked my 20 year old nephew who is in second year of his Mechanical Engineering course that what sort of career he wants for himself? The reply was truly amazing - "IT mein jaana hai". Well, hope his dream doesn't die too soon. At-least I believe in IT and will continue to believe in IT.

B schools start market trading lessons.. hahahaha..

You can call it awakening (I am not talking about B School. It's awakening of news channels.)

Wanted to laugh about this news. It sounds less like news and more like a publicity stunt for a selected B school which happened to "tip off" the story. To give the story some more credibility, they have added name of IIM also. Here is the story published on IBN Live. Great that they have started teaching investment now but if that means playing moneybhai on moneycontrol then I think the news piece and also the introduction of course is too little too late.

First because what happened in the market was unprecedented and second that virtual money can't teach you about the feelings that comes after investing real money. (Those who have played moneybhai will subscribe to my thought because there you buy or short sell like anything but with your own money it's like near impossible to do things like that).

Well, not to mention that we are learning investment management since last one month (most of the B schools have similar courses like that except that they keep quiet) and about 40-50% students play with their real money. We believe that B schools are not just a place to live in the virtual world but rather it's a place where you learn to take risk and most importantly you learn to grow your own spine.

Grow some spine kids.

Reliance Power - Power limited for few only

What does a public limited company means? It means, "the profits will be limited to only some public (atleast initially). If you don't believe this then sample this news piece from IBN..

Reliance Power allots shares, people who bid below 225 shares got none and that proves what a public limited company stands for. When the IPO was announced, Reliance power launched a blitzkrieg advertising campaign over all forms of media. Half page ads, radio, TV, hoardings everything was just shouting out loud that this is the IPO from a company which is famous for empowering small shareholders. Anil Ambani mentioned in his interview that Reliance power was his late father's vision and he belongs to the same company which popularized the stock market in India. People rightly say that stock market has seen two periods: before Reliance when people invested in land or gold and after Reliance where people started believing in the power of equity.

People still has the same faith in anything remotely related to Reliance and that's why when the IPO was announced the stock market witnessed a crash after long long time. The reason offered was absence of liquidity as people were keeping money aside to invest into Reliance and these were not those investors who has lakhs to invest but rather those with little cash to invest. And well, they ended up getting no stocks in the end.

They say that the world is biased towards the resourceful and it's true but Dhiru Bhai Ambani was someone who defied the perception and created wealth not only for himself but for million of small investors. A legacy which is unmatched till now across the world and something, which his son(s) are forgetting (atleast the younger one did show some signs of that).

I don't understand that a simple mathematical equation can become so complex when it comes to selecting investors. Reliance power will definitely prosper but the 450000 small investors will sulk for not getting any share. I am not one among those, instead I would invest in NTPC which is producing more electricity than what Reliance power will produce in 2012.

Anyways the good news is that now liquidity is unleashed and hopefully we will see some momentum in the market now.