The Hacking Python

I have been spied upon by Python.

On a recent trip to China, where Google is banned (I bet you didn’t know that), I had to set up a temporary non-Gmail Chinese-friendly email address.

On advice from a local friend, I joined one of China’s largest free email providers 163.com and forwarded all my incoming gmail mail to that account, so I could continue to stay in communicado with the world outside of China during my visit.

I had heard of the problem of snoopers looking at one’s emails and other communications in China, whether by the big brother Chinese Government or by hackers. But frankly, I didn’t think it was likely to happen to me.

I was in a third country meeting with a colleague, on my way to China, and sent an email from my 163. email to him while I was sitting in his office, containing a link to a Google document we were jointly working on.

As we are both editing the document, simultaneously (the wonders of the Cloud), both of our identifying icons appeared on that document, as they do.

“OMG!” I declared.

“There’s a THIRD icon on the page!!”

Alongside my and my colleague’s icons, there was a third one, which called himself “Python”, apparently monitoring/spying on the two of us working on this document.

It seems that a hacker or Government spy, calling himself “Python”, had 'compromised' my 163 email, and used the link I had emailed to my colleague, and opened it to observe me/us.

After a few minutes of me and my colleague gawking, the icon disappeared.

Python had gone away.

I noticed some peculiar activities on my cellphone also, and suspected that Python, or another such fellow, had also accessed that.

I haven’t seen him since, so I guess he got bored of hacking me, and went on his merry way.

Or perhaps he just got more discrete, and Python is watching me still.