Early last Thursday morning Sylvia and I got the shocking news that she was the victim of identity theft.

Her banker called from London, England to inform her that a hacker had hijacked her email address and sent out a message that she was stuck in London without money and was asking everyone on her email contact list to please send her £2,000 via courier.

It was obviously a scam because if she was in London she would have dropped by the bank and withdrawn some cash, her banker reasoned.

This call was followed by a rapid succession of similar phone calls from friends and acquaintances who wondered what was going on.

We would like to thank all our friends for making those calls, and for not simply sending money as requested. That was true friendship and we deeply appreciate it.

Neither of us would ever send such a an appeal for money, under any circumstances. If anyone ever receives such a message from us, please do not respond to the email because the address has obviously been hijacked. Immediately block further messages from the address, throw the message into the trash, and somehow call to inform us that we’ve been hacked.

Don’t feel bad about it, either. We’d do the same for you.

This has been a learning experience for both of us and we’d like to pass along some friendly advice, the lessons we’ve learned from dealing with the situation.

Number one, never trust a “secure” site unless you enter it from your computer’s “bookmarks.” This was the mistake Sylvia made the night before.

Hackers have devised phantom sites that appear to be your email, social networking or banking account, but which redirect your keystrokes to their computers so that they can read your passwords.

They then take over the account and change the passwords, so that you are no longer able to access your account and they then can steal from you and your friends.

Cybercrime has evolved and become more sophisticated, and is booming as never before. Stolen credit cards and bank accounts have fallen by 90 per cent in resale price among these groups, while stolen health care information and single sign-on log-in credentials for organizations, email and FTP accounts have become much more lucrative prizes for the criminals, who have also become more organized.

The hackers will also sell access to hijacked MySpace pages, for example, that can be used to spam or spread “malware” such as “Trojans” that can bring large financial returns to the crooks.

Which brings me to another point: do not post personal information such as your birthdate and address in your email or social networking account.

And never store a “library” of your received emails on your email account.

If your account is compromised, the crooks have the information needed to impersonate you, to steal your identity and make your life miserable.

If you require a copy of an email, such as your banking information, simply copy it onto a text program or print it out and store it someplace safe.

Then regularly delete all emails and remove them from your email “trash can” as well.

Lastly, keep your anti-virus software up to date, and don’t download programs from sites you don’t trust.

Those of us with Macs have felt secure because up until the past year most hackers have focussed on creating programs aimed at PCs. That has changed, as security experts warned one year ago that attacks have extended to Mac users.

While people are becoming more aware of cybercrime the bad news is that “we’re not getting quite to the point where people take all the right precautions,” says University of Calgary computer science professor Tom Keenan.

“We’re locking the front door but then leaving the back door open.”