At 11.42 am on a pleasant Monday, hackers gained access to my Telstra account.
They instantly removed my email address and mobile number, and added theirs to my account. This removed my opportunity to get the standard SMS or email from Telstra, warning of “account changes” – instead, this was sent to the crooks.
Having control over my account gave them access to all my emails. They started trawling over these, seeking personal information, banking and credit card details, and searching for any opportunities to defraud me, my family, friends and colleagues.
With the “account change” warning going to the scammers, not me, the first clue that something was amiss was an “account error” warning when I tried to send an email. We’ve all seen these, and I figured there was a poor connection to our wifi, as the error message said “no connection to the server”.
This was my first mistake – the failure to act quickly.
Fortunately though, I was saved by a phone call. A financial services company phoned to ask about our instructions to sell $35,000 of shares we hold and to purchase Bitcoin. This woke me from my relaxed Monday morning!
Our advisor sent me the email they had received. I was really concerned.
The crooks had used our personal information to construct a very convincing email. It read like it was from us.
Obviously it did not succeed because of the two-factor authentification used by any reputable financial services company. In this case, they will also not do a transfer without…
