A Brisbane man was targeted by sophisticated cyber hackers, when he discovered 288,000 frequenter points had been used on an overseas holiday and drained thousands from his account.

The cyber criminals didn’t stop there, they also hacked his PayPal and even a defunct Netflix account.

Renowned cyber security expert from the University of Melbourne, Suelette Dreyfus, says the man was possibly hacked through “SIM jacking”.

“That might be where someone gathers information, intelligence about you … and then contacts tour mobile phone carrier to say I’ve lost my phone can you send me a replacement SIM at this address,” she told Scott Emerson.

“And then from that they have your phone details, and your phone SIM.”

It gives the scammer unvetted access.

“The other thing that can happen, which is a little bit more in your control, if you re-use passwords, even if you add a 1, 2, 3 or on the end, or you use insecure passwords that can be guessed by rapid firing reasonable guesses of dictionary words in a computer program to see which ones work, those are very common methods.”

She says it’s dangerous to use the same passwords.

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