The spam in your inbox could be a terrorist's handiwork

Watch out! The spam mail that just hit your inbox could be a encrypted information from a terrorist to his companions.

With terrorists using internet and other communication technologies to plan, plot and carry out their subversive activities, intelligence agencies reckon that some of the millions of spam mails that are sent out daily, could be the handiwork of these groups.

"Numerous softwares and websites are now available through which one can easily send spam to numerous e-mail account holders. Terrorists, who are now more tech savvy than before are sending out encrypted messages to millions including the one actually it is meant for," a senior Home Ministry official said.

Explaining the rationale behind sending out a secret message to millions to avoid any risks, the official said, "99 per cent of the people don't even bother to check spam mails which usually get delivered in the spam box because of strong firewall of e-mail service providers. Usually people just delete them. Moreover, the message is in encrypted form and hence any ordinary person would not be able to decipher it."

Adding to spam mails, multimedia files like pictures, audio and video files are another source of sending coded information. 

In a recent raid, the security agencies found a lot of Carnatic music files on the computer of a terror suspect. During interrogation, officials realised he hardly had any knowledge about the genre of music which made them suspicious.

"Hence, the hard-disk was sent for further scrutiny. It then came to light that music files were nothing but just a camouflage to a video about how to make bombs and assemble rocket launchers," the official said.

In another case, the security agencies had come across hundreds of pictures of a leading Bollywood actress from the computer of an alleged terrorist.

"The hard disk of the computer which went under forensic analysis gave away the real story behind those pictures. They were nothing but short instructions from his commanders about timing to attack a particular place of worship among, receiving money and other such instructions," the official said.