Yay!! Finally February 1 is here. So what? I can blog again. But what stopped you from blogging before. Well a couple of things, most notably the “Shumila Ahmed” incident. Search for her on the search engines and then you might get some clue as to who it is and what is all this hype around her. I had the privilege of having a personal (email) conversation with her. The privilege coz she s indeed real pretty. Its sad (yet somehow I know why) that someone played such a prank on her. Her pic along with a missing note was posted on facebook superwall application. The pretty face being her, and the peoples “generosity” of willing to help to find her made them all forward it to their friends. Well I didn’t but rather I posted about it on my blog though all the time indeed mentioning that it is just another hoax chain forward. To some extent I was surprised that someone indeed mailed me telling that she was Shumila Ahmed and she was not missing.

“hi it is me shumila ahmed. i dont now how to prove to you but this thing has been driving me mad, i was neva missing sum1 played a prank on me and it was on facebook and now its on this. i ave emailed them so many times to remove it but no1 is listening plz help me and take it off, im going through alot of stress and agony because of this thanks “

And after I made that blog private and asked her to contact the facebook team, this is what she had to reply..

“hi thanks alot for that i really appreciate it, i ave asked facebook but they said they cant hlp me, but if you c any1 who has it jus ask em to remove it thanks alot “

Well facebook has been going over into criticism over its privacy issues. People’s data not being deleted even if they want to “unregister”, etc etc. Actually facebook doesnt give you an option of unregister, it just let you disable or enable your account. And in the time being all your data is (safely?) stored on their servers. Another of the reasons as to why am not all that active on facebook, not that am all that active on orkut now either for that matters.

Well, the Shumila Ahmed post drove visitors to my blog like crazy, before the post, my daily max was 38, now its 198. It sure helped me to achieve my monthly blog stat though

The actual content of the post, sans the email and the picture that was in there is..

“the name”, is missing. She has been missing for now

two weeks. Maybe if everyone passes this on, someone

will see “the name”. That is how the girl from Stevens Point
was found by circulation of her picture on tv. The internet
circulates even overseas, South America, UK , and Canada
etc. Please pass this to everyone in your address book.
With GOD on her side she will be found. “I am asking you all,
begging you to please forward this email on to anyone and
everyone you know, PLEASE. It is still not too late. Please
help us. If anyone knows anything, please contact me at: somemail@HOTMAIL.COM . I am including a picture
of her. All prayers are appreciated! It only takes 2 seconds
to forward this. If it was your friend, you would want all the
help you could get!!

Again I ll like to point that Shumila Ahmed is NOT MISSING. It was a prank played on her by someone. And though am sure that there is a simple way of identifying who was the first person to post that, if only the facebook team could help her a lil by identifying and blocking the post. Maybe she should go to the authorities.