HIS heart skipped a beat when he saw the subject of his daughter's e-mail.

It read: 'Urgent Response: Get Back to Me, dad, Immediately'.

It seemed his daughter had gone to meet a friend whom she had met online in the US state of Ohio when she got robbed, said the retiree, who wanted to be known only as Mr Chan.

His daughter, Karen, works as a lawyer in London.

As the hotel would not let her leave unless she paid the bill, she needed him to transfer $2,600 ($7,000) through Western Union within 24 hours.

It was only after a few frantic calls and upon closer reading that he realised it was a scam, and that someone had actually hacked into his daughter's e-mail account.

Mr Chan, 64, told The New Paper that he was at home on 15 Apr when he read the e-mail.

'I was surprised that she would send a message asking for help over e-mail. What if I didn't check my e-mails for a few days?'

He also wondered why his daughter didn't just call using her handphone, as she usually does.

His wife also read it. Said Mrs Chan: 'I scanned quickly through it and my instant reaction was to get worried.'

The Chans said it was plausible because their daughter was due to travel to Morocco around that time.

'It was possible that she had got into some trouble, although we did wonder why she was suddenly going to the US,' Mrs Chan said.

They quickly called their 32-year-old daughter in London, but she did not answer as it was late at night there.

They then contacted their son in Hong Kong, and forwarded the e-mail to him. He told them it was 'sheer nonsense'.

SPELLING ERRORS

Mrs Chan said they were 'not thinking straight' at first. 'Logic just flew out of our heads because we thought she was in trouble,' she said.

'A Western Union transfer is immediate, so can you imagine if we had rushed off to send the money?'

Mrs Chan said the biggest giveaway was their daughter supposedly signing off as 'Karen'.

'She usually signs off as Mei, which is what we call her. Her Chinese name is Li Mei,' said Mrs Chan.

She felt the story was amateurish. 'It's lame that she had gone to the US just to meet someone whom she had met over the Internet,' she said.

Mr Chan said he also noticed spelling and grammatical errors in the e-mail, which his daughter was unlikely to make.

Still, they were concerned that someone had actually hacked into their daughter's e-mail account.

'Someone read through her e-mails and knew she would be making a trip, and that she e-mails her father,' said Mrs Chan.

Their daughter told The New Paper over the phone that she was alarmed when she received an urgent SMS from her parents asking her to call them.

She said she was angry and felt violated when she found out what had happened.

There were tell-tale signs that something was not right even before that, she said.

Just the day before her parents had read the e-mail, Miss Chan said she had trouble logging in to her account, which comes under a free e-mail service provided by British Telecommunications.

'I thought it was strange as I had not changed my password in more than 10 years,' she said.

She then called the provider and had her password reset but did not think much of it after that.

After this incident, Miss Chan said she will close her account once she has copied her contact list and cleared her e-mails. And she won't be buying things on the web any more, and will do her online banking only at work.

'It's sad that we have to be so distrustful, but frauds are becoming more prevalent,' she said.