LEYTON: Hackers target councillor (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

LEYTON: Hackers target councillor

4:47pm Thursday 29th July 2010 in

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FRIENDS, family and colleagues of Lib Dem councillor Farooq Qureshi were left puzzled when they received emails claiming he was stranded abroad and in need of thousands of pounds.

Waltham Forest Town Hall even received worried phone calls from residents after messages stating he was stuck in Africa without a passport were sent out to dozens of people from his private Hotmail account.

But the former mayor, who represents Forest Ward in Leyton, was very much safe and sound at his home.

It is believed internet crooks hacked into his emails and then sent out the fake pleas for help, including one claiming that he needed £2,000 to get back home from a post-election holiday to Nigeria and another asking for more than €3,000 to be sent to an address in Spain.

He said: “It was very strange. I received a phone call from the Town Hall asking whether I was stuck in Nigeria but I said, 'no I'm in Leyton'. Some people seemed a bit surprised to see me afterwards but I don't think anyone fell for it.

“I remember a few weeks ago I was sent an email purporting to be from Hotmail saying they were reviewing a few accounts and asking if I wanted to continue with mine.

“It told me to click on an icon if so and I genuinely believed it - so I clicked and thought nothing of it.

“Two days later I tried to get into my account but it kept saying I had the wrong password. When people started to phone me asking about Nigeria that's when I realised what had happened.”

Cllr Qureshi said there was no confidential or council material in the account, although there was a large collection of family photographs.

He has since had the account re-activated with the help of Microsoft.

He added: “It was a very stressful experience and it's worrying that my account was so fragile to be hacked into. I sent round emails to everyone when I got my account back apologising for the inconvenience and assuring them that I was in one piece in east London.

“This has never happened to me before and while I'm not a computer whiz it has made me a lot more wary.”

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