Scammer gets into computer

Jenny Barton says it was a very hard lesson learned but it could have been a lot worse. ‘I just don’t want anything like this to happen to other people,’ she said. Mireille Merlet-Shaw

A BANGALOW mum says she has been through a "nightmare" after a scammer gained remote access to her computer, forcing her to cancel all her credit cards and bank accounts.

Jenny Barton said she received a phone call on Wednesday afternoon from someone claiming to be from Windows support services.

"He told me that my computer had been hacked," she said. "I was asked to turn my computer on and connect to the internet. I did that and then he asked me to type in a certain code.

"That's when I realised that he had remote access to my computer and all of these bright red exclamation marks were coming up on the screen.

"The whole thing just happened so quickly."

In desperation, Ms Barton called her husband and asked him to come home.

He immediately rang Microsoft, who told him to turn the computer off and unplug it from the wall.

The next few hours, and the following two days, were spent cancelling credit cards, changing banking passwords and lodging reports with the Department of Fair Trading and the police.

"We had to change everything," Ms Barton said.

"We just couldn't risk it. I'm still worrying that this man might have been able to access other personal information and I'm thinking about things like identity theft.

"Normally I just hang up. But he seemed to know what he was talking about, and it happened so quickly. It's quite frightening.

"I feel so stupid; I feel violated.

"I just want to let other people know that this can happen."