What you do in the first quarter-hour decides how much you get back. Five steps, in order.
Bank fraud recovery is almost entirely about timing. Reported within an hour: high recovery rate. Reported after 24 hours: substantially harder. If you have any reason to believe your bank account has been compromised — money missing, unfamiliar transactions, a login alert from a city you've never been to — this is the running order. Do not stop to think; do these in this sequence.
Not the regular customer service line. Every bank has a dedicated 24/7 fraud number printed on the back of every card. Have the card in your hand. Say: "I believe my account has been compromised, I need to put a fraud freeze on now." They put you straight through. This call is the single most important thing you do — every minute matters.
While you're on the phone with the bank, use a different device (not the one that may be compromised) to change your online banking password to something completely new. Don't use a saved password manager entry — type the new one fresh. The reason: if the criminal still has access via the original device, changing on the same device may not lock them out cleanly.
Most bank apps and websites have a 'Sign out of all devices' option in settings. Use it. This kills any session the criminal currently has — they have to log back in, and now the password is different.
Every unauthorised transaction, the time it happened, the destination if visible. Banks need this evidence for the recovery claim. Don't delete anything from your transaction history — screenshot it instead. If the police get involved, this evidence chain matters.
Lodge a Scamwatch report at scamwatch.gov.au — five minutes online. If you have cyber insurance (small businesses often have it bundled with their general policy), call them too. Both numbers go on a written record so the bank's fraud team can reference an external case number, which speeds the investigation.
Once the immediate fire is out, change passwords on every account that shares an email address or password with the breached one. Check email rules for any new auto-forward rules the criminal may have added. Run a password manager breach check. If your business email is involved, call whedo.it — there's usually a forensic pass needed.
Prevention beats recovery — the rest of these tips help avoid ever needing this article.
If a business banking account is involved, the scale changes (and so does the legal posture). whedo.it has handled three business-account breaches for clients in the last two years — usually recovered in full because of how fast the response was. Call any time.
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I built this business because I wanted to do Managed services properly — for a small number of clients, at a senior level, with the same person on the end of the phone every time. The work is too important and the stakes are too high for anything less.
Behind the formal qualifications: a Cyber Security degree from the University of the Sunshine Coast, currently working on my Master’s, plus a continuous stack of Microsoft, Acronis and Nerdio certifications — the ones that have to be renewed because the threats don’t stay still.
Behind the certifications: thirty years of doing the work. I cut my teeth in consulting, then went to Cisco on the team building the original iPhone — Cisco’s VoIP handset, the trademark Apple later acquired in the 2007 settlement. At TPG in 1999 I sold frame-relay networks when frame-relay was the cutting edge of business connectivity. I built and sold a Sydney-based MSP called Online IT before relocating to Perth.
Three decades of watching what’s actually changed and what hasn’t. The technology has changed almost beyond recognition. The principles haven’t. Identity first. Backup that has actually been tested. A senior practitioner who knows your environment. Calm in an incident. Honest answers when the answer is “no.”
That’s whedo.it. That’s the brief. That’s why long-tenure clients don’t leave.
— Warren Ephron, Director