Catching cyber stalkers

After back-to-back complaints from Bollywood to the Cyber Crime cell, the cops say that a hacking pattern is now emerging

There seems to be a pattern in the way celebrity email and social networking accounts are being hacked into, according to sleuths. For starters, according to sources, it has emerged that at least in two of the cases, the accounts of two found to be hacked from Central Mumbai.

'In at least one of the cases, the account was hacked though a private internet service provider. The IP address has been reported and it was revealed that it belongs to an areas in Central Mumbai," says a source. Though the police have not initiated criminal cases as a follow-up to the complaints because the culprit has not been booked yet, they say that they are keeping a tight vigil on a couple of internet voyeurs.

"Hacking the social networking sites and the emails mean they will get immediate access to the email IDs of other celebs who are either friends or colleagues of the person whose account has been hacked. It's quite a good data base and can be sold to other people in the same fraternity and even outside. This data is sold at a very high price in the market," says a police officer who once investigated a similar case. Once investigated a similar case. Over the past six months, there have been at least three complaints. "The problem arises when the account has been hacked into from cyber cafe of from someone else's internet account. In that case, the owner of the cafe and the person holding the account will be held responsible," says Vijay Mukhi, a cyber crime expert.

Celebs victims so far

Kareena Kapoor: Her personal email ID that she had been maintaining for the last four years was hacked. The email had the database of all her contacts in Bollywood.

Katrina Kaif: A mail ID was created in her name and an infected attachment (which contained a virus) was sent to many.

Malakia Arora-Khan: A mail ID similar to hers was created and mails were sent to wannabe models asking them to do a bikini shoot.

Meghna Naidu: Her email ID was hacked and the hacker sent obscene emails.

Shamita Shetty and Riya Sen: Both their social networking sites were hacked.