My friend GM Gilberto Hernandez (head coach of the UTB chess team) just asked me to post this. He recently received an email for a free upgrade from Hot Mail. He clicked on the link and all of sudden, his email account was hijacked!! This is the email account that was hijacked gmgilberto@hotmail.com. The hacker sent the following email to ALL his contacts:

Hello,

How are you doing today? I am sorry I didn’t inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which are Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria.

It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that I found myself is very hard for me to explain. I am really in need of money in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport,documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because I have no money on me.

I am now owning a hotel bill of $1,600 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management. I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1,000 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2,600 to sort out my problems here?

I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don’t even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i needed your help.

I am sending you this e-mail from the city Library and I only have 30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union.

Best Regards
Gilberto

Gilberto is my friend and if this would have been a real situation, I would help him. However, I knew that he could not have been in Africa because I have been in contact with him since he is coming to Lubbock, Texas, next week to participate in the SPICE Cup at Texas Tech University. In addition, I got a real email from him warning me that his email account has been hijacked. This is now his new and real email address: coach_gilberto@hotmail.com

He already received a number of calls from friends to see if he is OK due to this fake email. So what is the moral of the story? Be very careful when you click on any unknown link. The crooks can really destroy your life and / or give you a lot of headaches if you fall into their traps.

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Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
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