Account Takeover Recovery for Australians: Get Your Hijacked Email, Social, or Banking Account Back After a Phishing Scam

You clicked the link because it looked like Australia Post, or your bank, or a Facebook security alert. You typed your password into a page that looked exactly right. Maybe you also typed the six-digit code your phone buzzed with. Now you cannot log in to your email. Your friends are getting weird messages from your account. Your bank app is showing a transfer you did not make, or your Instagram is posting crypto ads, or your Gmail is forwarding everything to an address you have never heard of. Account Takeover Recovery from Cyber by Exegesis is the engagement that walks you through getting the account back and shutting the attacker out of everything connected to it.

The problem

ACCC Scamwatch lists phishing as one of the most-reported scam categories in Australia year after year. The attack itself is brief — a fake login page, a hurried code — but the consequences spread. An attacker who controls your email controls every account that uses that email for password reset. They quietly add a forwarding rule so they see your bank notifications. They change your recovery phone number so you cannot get back in through the front door. By the time you notice, the takeover is no longer one account — it is a chain.

The ACSC guidance for individuals and families is clear that account recovery requires a sequence: secure the email or root account first, then work outward to everything that depended on it, then clean up the devices that may have been compromised in the first place. Most people, in the panic of a live takeover, do these steps in the wrong order — or stop after the first one and assume the attacker is gone.

What Account Takeover Recovery does

Cyber by Exegesis runs a fixed-scope recovery engagement for individuals:

• A triage call within the first business day to identify which account was hijacked, what it is connected to, and whether money has moved.
• Coordinated recovery with the affected provider — Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, your bank, or the retailer — using the documented recovery paths each one offers.
• A downstream sweep: every account that uses the compromised email or phone number for password reset is reviewed, password-rotated, and re-secured with phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication where the provider supports it.
• A device check across the phone and computer you use most — looking for unauthorised sessions, suspicious app permissions, mailbox forwarding rules, and OAuth grants the attacker may have left behind.
• A short written summary of what was recovered, what was reported (to Scamwatch, to your bank, to the eSafety Commissioner if image-based abuse is involved), and what to watch for over the next 30 days.

Cyber by Exegesis is the cyber consultancy line of Exegesis — the same company behind the DRMO live product. This engagement is recovery and hardening for one person. We are not your bank’s fraud team and we cannot reverse a transfer, but we coordinate with the providers who can and we make sure the attacker is fully out before you go back to normal.

How it works

1. You contact us via the waitlist with a short description of what happened. We schedule a triage call within one business day.
2. On the call we map the affected account, every downstream account that depends on it, and whether the attacker has already moved money or messaged your contacts.
3. We work through the provider’s recovery process with you — screen-share if helpful — and re-establish ownership of the root account.
4. We rotate credentials and recovery contacts across every downstream account, enable strong MFA, and remove any forwarding rules, app passwords, or OAuth grants the attacker added.
5. We help you lodge the right reports — Scamwatch, your bank, eSafety where relevant — and leave you with a written summary and a 30-day watch list.

Why this matters in Australia

Phishing is the entry point for most consumer account takeovers reported to ACCC Scamwatch, and Australian banks, telcos, and government services are heavily impersonated in the messages that drive it. The recovery path is the same wherever you are in the country — Sydney, Perth, regional Queensland — because the providers are global and the reporting bodies (Scamwatch, OAIC, eSafety) are national. What changes is whether you walk the path alone in the middle of the night or with someone who has done it before. Cyber by Exegesis is the second option.

Sources

• ACSC guidance for individuals and families: https://www.cyber.gov.au/protect-yourself
• ACCC Scamwatch (National Anti-Scam Centre): https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/
• eSafety Commissioner (for image-based abuse or harassment arising from a takeover): https://www.esafety.gov.au/
• OAIC Notifiable Data Breaches scheme (where a takeover exposes personal information held by an organisation): https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/notifiable-data-breaches
• Cyber by Exegesis — Account Takeover Recovery (waitlist)

Join the waitlist

Join the waitlist — first access when Cyber by Exegesis opens Account Takeover Recovery for Australians

We are sequencing recoveries by account type (email and social first, banking and retail second) and by provider. Join the waitlist with the account that has been hijacked and the rough timeline — we will tell you when we can take your case.