Turnstone column: Hunstanton writer John Maiden expresses his frustration with BT after having his online identity stolen

In his weekly Turnstone column, Hunstanton writer John Maiden discusses the aftermath of a scammer stealing his online identity...

Further to the account of my slight stroke in last week's column. I am pleased to report that the care and attention received when I kept my appointment at the hospital stroke clinic, last Thursday, was equal to the service provided by the A&E staff.

Unfortunately, the competence of these dedicated healthcare professionals was not matched by the call handlers at British Telecom, although the fault in their performance is probably due to decision-makers further up the chain of command at BT.

My problems with this very large company coincided with the onset of the stroke and are ongoing, with little hope of a light at the end of, what promises to be a long and winding tunnel.

At this point, I really must apologise for what must be a lack of security on my laptop, which has enabled some abominable scumbag to steal my online identity, in an attempt to obtain money by false pretences from several of my friends and neighbours.

As soon as I realised what was happening my first thought was to inform everyone on my contact list that all emails from john.maiden123@outlook.com were most definitely not from the real John Maiden. It was then that I discovered I could no longer log on to the internet, even after changing my password. Probably because the stroke has slowed me down more than I first thought, it took me a while to realise that my phoney double had fooled BT into changing MY password.

This not only makes it impossible (at this stage) to reinstate myself as john.maiden123@btinternet.com, it also means that anyone attempting to contact me on my own email address will find that their email has been redirected to john.maiden123@outlook.com.

When I rang BT it was on the assumption its highly qualified engineers would soon have me back online, while the person pretending to be me would be prevented from doing so again, to me or anyone else. After speaking to BT call handlers in various locations across the British Isles, it has become blatantly obvious that I am being penalised because I cannot remember the make and model of my first car, acquired in the 1960s in response to the closure of cross country railway lines.

I was not amused by this bit of nonsense. Neither will I find a repeat of the film Identity Thief quite so funny as I did the first three times I watched it on television...