The Night Hakan Did Not Sleep in the Dormitory

There was a boy named Hakan.

One day he sent me an email.

At that time, the internet still had a strange innocence around it. People clicked things more easily. Security warnings were not part of daily life, and many of us learned about phishing only after something bad happened.

I clicked the link in his message.

That was enough.

Somehow, Hakan got my password. Then he changed it.

Suddenly, my own email account was no longer mine.

It is difficult to explain now how personal an email account felt in those years. It was not only a place for messages. It was part of your identity. University information, friends, registrations, conversations, everything was there. Losing access felt less like losing a password and more like someone entering your room and changing the lock.

I went to the university’s IT department.

After explaining the situation, proving that the account belonged to me, and dealing with the usual administrative steps, I finally recovered it.

The technical problem was solved.

The emotional problem was not.

By the time I returned to the dormitory, I was furious.

Not clever furious.

Not calm furious.

The kind of furious that makes a person walk faster than necessary and rehearse arguments in his head.

I found Hakan.

Then he ran.

I ran after him.

So began one of the more ridiculous scenes of my dormitory years: two university students running through the building because one of them had stolen the other’s email password.

At that moment, of course, it did not feel ridiculous at all.

I was angry enough that he clearly believed keeping some distance was a very good idea.

Apparently, he believed this strongly enough that he did not stay in the dormitory that night.

He was afraid to come back.

By the next day, the situation had already started to lose its heat. Anger has an interesting life cycle. At first it feels permanent. A few hours later, it becomes a story. Years later, it becomes something you remember with a mixture of embarrassment and amusement.

Today, what interests me most is how primitive online security was for us.

Someone sent a link.

Someone clicked it.

A password disappeared.

Then instead of incident reports, security teams, account recovery apps, and two-factor authentication, the story ended with the IT office and a chase through a dormitory corridor.

It was a different internet.

And maybe we were different people too.

I never forgot the lesson, though.

Do not trust a link just because you know the person who sent it.

And if you steal someone’s password, perhaps do not sleep in the same dormitory that night.