Security warning after “sickening and scary” video
THE director of a yoga school is warning Facebook users to set up strong online security after hackers created a fake sex video of him and then demanded money so they wouldn’t share it.
Surender Saini, better known by his yoga name Jnandev, described the attempt as “sickening and scary” after being sent a video.
Criminals had edited it together by mixing it with footage from a real video chat he had had with his wife Deepika, who is visiting India.
“They must’ve hacked into my account and taken the little bit of video when I was talking to Deepika,” he said from his home near Whitland, Carmar- thenshire.
“In the first half of the video you could see it’s clearly me, the other half is half of a body and basically someone playing with themselves. Also at the top of the camera, they had a girl stripped off naked.
“In that first hour, I can’t really explain it. It was like someone was trying to kill me, kill my name.
“Honestly, you feel they’ve stabbed into your heart, you don’t feel as though you’re who you are any more. It’s really scary.
“I did pull myself together and was pleased to see so much support out there from local peo- ple and the yoga community.”
He deleted his Facebook account and reported it to the police, who reassured him and gave him advice about how to stay safe online.
After recovering from the shock, he now wants to warn others.
“What made me really strong and think, ‘I must share this experience with people,’ was when the police asked me a couple of times, ‘You don’t feel like you’re going to kill yourself?’”
Jnandev says he was given the following advice: “Keep changing your password, make it stronger, and the best advice was that if people contact you and try to get you into trouble, don’t let them, don’t respond or say anything.
“They said it’s not only me, they do the same to hundreds of people and out of those, if even 10-15 people pay them money, it’s a lucrative business for them, they make a fortune out of it.
“The police reassured me and said once you block them and say ‘do what you want to do, I’m not paying you,’ they move on.
“That’s why I’m feeling quite happy now, but at the same time I’m feeling like I want to make people aware and say, ‘please don’t let people abuse you and put you in the corner or they’ll keep coming back to you again and again.”