His 44th was a particularly cruel birthday for Rajesh Sadhwani. It was the day in March last year that he received an e-mail on his BlackBerry telling him that his password for his Yahoo e-mail account had been changed.
Shortly afterwards, the jewellery designer received an e-mail, warning him to 'enjoy what else is to be unleashed'. There was also a message from his account with social networking site Facebook telling him to 'watch his back'.
Sure enough, when Sadhwani checked, he could not log in to his Yahoo and Facebook accounts. Then he discovered friends of his had been sent abusive messages from his Facebook page.
The hacker had also cracked his Expedia and Orbitz travel accounts, destroying his itinerary for an upcoming business trip to the Basel Jewellery Show in Switzerland.
Sadhwani went to the Central Police Station and made a detailed report. He also confirmed with Yahoo, Expedia and Facebook that he was indeed the proper account owner and his passwords were changed back.
But the damage was done. Sadhwani had used his Yahoo account as an online database to help organise his life, which included seven years' worth of copies of all the designs for his successful jewellery company, as well as all his business contacts and correspondence. There were also details of his teenage daughter's plans to study in the United States.
