A teacher who lost thousands in savings while on holiday has issued a warning to others on the risk of hackers.
Matthew Shaw, a 27-year-old science teacher, was on holiday in Cornwall in August 2021 with his wife Davina, 27, who works in a nursery, and the couple were looking forward to the two-week trip as their only chance of the year to go away.
Mr Shaw was unaware his identity was sold on the dark web and lost £3,500 to a Romanian hacker who used it to pay for a hotel and drinks tab.
One day, while driving to try jet skiing for the first time, Matthew said he unexpectedly received a notification on his phone from his bank, telling him his account had just paid £3,500 for a hotel stay – although the location and name were not provided.
“Panicking”, Matthew said he called the bank, First Direct, which concluded that someone from Romania had opened an account in his name with Monese – a digital financial services company – using his identity and linked it to his First Direct account to pay for the hotel after finding his details on the dark web – which the company said could cost just 10 US dollars.
The £3,500 transaction left Matthew with just £20 in his bank account, and the couple from Bourton-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire, had to end their holiday a week early, leaving Davina in tears.
Matthew said First Direct was “brilliant” and the money was refunded a week later, but even now, having tightened his security measures, he said he receives at least six or seven email notifications every day asking him to approve unauthorised sign-in attempts.
Speaking about the moment he received the notification on holiday, he told PA Real Life: “We had woken up, we had breakfast, and we were on our way to go and do jet skiing – something we’ve always wanted to do.
“Then, I parked up and I had a notification at the top of my phone saying, ‘£3,500 has been paid to a hotel’.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’, and I rang First Direct straight away and said, ‘This is not me’.
“They were going through their security questions, but I was just panicking and thinking, ‘All my money’s gone – that was our savings for a house and it’s all gone’.”
At the time, Matthew was an unqualified…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Independent Travel…