Intruders and information theft

Marynita from Burwood

We live in Burwood near red zone space. Last week my husband and I woke around midnight to the sound of the creaky floor by our bedroom. A light switch in the hallway was turned on and off by whoever it was. On looking around we didn’t find anyone or anything unusual. The next morning, however, we found keys had been removed from the key hooks near our room, files from inside desk drawers and a filing cabinet had been removed and foraged through. We contacted police and fingerprints were taken. It was unusual, as no items of value were taken despite camera, ipad, instruments etc being clearly visible.

A day later, I spent half an hour cleaning my car so I could lend it to a friend. I pulled out every paper, receipt, discarded forms, lipsticks, books, whatever and threw it all in one bucket to sort out later. I placed the bucket inside the laundry in the house. It was a day or two later when I went to sort it’s contents that I realised it had disappeared. My husband thought I was being paranoid.

Yesterday, I received emails and texts requesting verification from my bank, and discovered upon ringing the bank that someone had attempted to change my bank password and phone number. My bank account is now frozen.

Last night, my husband received a verification email that read as if it were sent from Spark. On ringing Spark, he was told they had no record of sending him that email.

We are grateful to the police for taking the intrusion of our home seriously, and have updated them on each event. We are believing the culprits will get their come uppance and are taking extra security measures.

Needless to say, this ordeal has been scary, annoying, and invasive. My alert levels are way up. I feel violated and I am teetering on paranoia.

So, dear neighbours, please lock up and don’t write passwords and such down. Keep papers with your identity and account information and any other sensitive information locked up or destroyed.

Trying to keep it together.