In her first public appearance since she admitted that her Harvard University teaching offer was a phishing attack, journalist Nidhi Razdan, who was allegedly offered a job as an Associate Professor at Harvard University, said that she wishes that people learn from her "horrible experience" and that she came out and spoke about the issue as she did not want to lie about it. She spoke at an event conducted by the Kautilya School of Public Policy to discuss the upcoming budget and how to manage the pandemic.
Nidhi, who has been a senior journalist with the NDTV 24x7 before she quit to take the job she thought she was offered at Harvard, said that she came out and spoke about it because she wanted people to learn from her mistake. "It has been a traumatic week but I have learnt quite a few lessons from this. And the reason why I went public, even though people close to me asked me not to, is because I never wanted to lie and I wanted to be upfront about it. I think that if even one person learns from this, I would be very happy," she said.
Nidhi said that she had no idea that something as harmless as a PDF file could contain malware and that she wants people to be cautious while on the internet. "My only advice to people is that nothing on the internet is what it seems. Even online conversations with seemingly real people are not what they seem. I never realised that the PDF file I downloaded could be malware. And I know that today. The fact that there is lots of data that is synced — your passwords in websites. And that's how people see what you are searching and then profile you. Your passwords can be easily hijacked. I hope my horrible experience can help people about this," she added.
According to reports, Nidhi has also filed a complaint with the Delhi Police on January 18 regarding "commission of cognisable offences including forgery, cheating, identity fraud and impersonation by unknown accused against her", reported the media. Earlier, she had filed a complaint with the Jammu and Kashmir Police on January 16. She was in Srinagar at the time.
