How my business partner and I became a victim of cyber theft

"I was driving to work today when I started getting several calls from the website setup company as a follow up and to sell their services to me. They asked for my existing domain username and password. Since I wanted my webpage to go live immediately, I trusted them enough to share my username and password. The website managing executive must have asked me at least four or five times if I was "married" and if I had business partners. I don't know what he's doing with my password since they aren't taking my calls now that I have transferred the advance!" my colleague Ruchi Munjal recounted furiously.

When I woke up to seven missed calls from her that morning, I knew it was going to be bad. When I called her back, she was crying over the phone. I told her I would be in office in half an hour and we would get to problem; it was just a part of the many glitches of starting a new company.

It was our second day at the new office and we couldn't be happier. As i walked in, I saw a very tense partner working quietly on the invoice.

Being the marketing partner of my company, I wanted to set up the social media for Wings immediately and put together our marketing strategy in place for her travel and lifestyle company.

'They still call for a 'willing exchange' for returning 34 of my mails, which sounds like blackmail to me.'

The everyday workplace commotion around us was disturbing, yet there was an uncomfortable silence in the room with the two of us going about our tasks quietly.

The website needed to be up for the marketing to kick-in and Ruchi was trying to get the beta version up that day, having begun work on it with some website designing company around three weeks ago.

"Lunch?" I asked, few hours later. She was delighted to be out of a messy morning for temporary relief. We had kept our friendship out when it came to opening our own companies — hers being one for travel and lifestyle, and mine dealt with content and marketing — and I decided that I won't ask her anything unless she wanted to tell me herself.

We were so different in terms of what we did, yet so alike: our love for work, our passion for life, travel, food, and so many things. We complemented each other well in business.

Finally, around 3pm, she got back to being normal, made coffee for us, and started chatting about our evening the day before at one of the embassies for a mid-summer party, which was supposed to have been over at 8pm but finally ended pretty late.

We relaxed after a tense day and so I joked, "Well, at least we got loads of work done today." Then I sent Ruchi three emails with the marketing plan and some creatives, neither of which she received. I then sent them to her hotmail account, which worked fine. We had just sent out emails to everyone we had met last evening and I began to get responses almost immediately. She didn't.

And then, all hell broke loose. She tried to contact the website managers who didn't take her calls till we called from my phone, and told them that she wasn't getting any mails after just having made the payment.

After a lengthy exchange, Ruchi said: "They've told me that they have changed the server of my emails to their main one and it will take 24 hours to be activated."

I was furious and shocked to learn they had changed our active server account! And that too without informing the client; taking permission was a far cry. She then began calling them to change her domain to the original for the mails and they insisted they were looking into it and would fix it in 15 minutes.

"After an hour, I called and was informed that they have changed my server just the way I wanted it to be and my mails should now begin to come in. I waited. And waited. Nothing changed in the next hour and there were still no mails coming into my inbox."

I tried to calm Ruchi down and we tried to focus on something else but what we both dreaded the most had happened. As we were trying to figure out what was happening, she screamed. She could see her IP address being changed by someone, as she watched.

She called them immediately and demanded to know what was going on and the minute they realised she knew exactly what was happening, they disconnected the call. We continued to call for hours after that and no one answered.

"When I didn't get any mail by 8.30, I called web hosting company godaddy and they informed me that the server was not changed back to theirs. That the mails continued to be pushed to the server of the website manager. By then, 34 of my mails were, which haven't reached me. They called and demanded money, not willing to put anything on record over email, and told me point blank that they would only handover the email if I paid them Rs 14,000! But thanks to technology, I requested my contact at godaddy who helped me on call for one-and-a-half hours, changed the settings and recreated my ids. They still call for a 'willing exchange' for returning 34 of my mails, which sounded like blackmail to me."

Finally, we tried to reach the website operator's owner. Even their senior manager delivered nothing, apart for blackmailing clients, who happened to be women. Here are my key takeaways from the cyber disaster:

• Never make complete payments till the job is done: For women, starting their own little firms from scratch is difficult for a number of reasons: the broker for the office confirmed that all the "problems" in the new office like the security system, the inverter, the lights, the wobbly table, et al would be sorted before we would officially start work there. A fortnight later, on the day of the puja, nothing was done and the broker couldn't be reached on the phone. Finally, we managed to get work kickstarted owing to an understanding with the landlord.
• Don't be in a hurry: Wait till you see something concrete before making any payments: however big or small.
• Fraud: A number of these IT companies who make websites are cheats and one has to be very careful with them. NEVER give your password to anyone unless it is on email and a contract is signed. Make your own contract; don't wait for the other party.
• Make your own rules and stick to them. They should be absolute and make no exceptions — not for friends, relatives or ex-colleagues.
• Have a backup plan: In this case, there was godaddy to help out and salvage 90 per cent of the situation.
• Don't think twice about opening your new venture as a single woman! Go for it and become stronger each day.

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