It was meant to be an exciting new career chapter for seascape artist Amanda Glasson.
The passionate painter made the big decision in 2024 to embark on a full-time career as an artist, after decades in roles as diverse as nursing, administration, housekeeping and retail.
She set up a new business Instagram page to showcase her pastel seaside scenes and native bird paintings, and her customer base started to grow.
“I’ve painted throughout my life, but never called myself an artist before. In the past it was mainly for family and friends, and the odd exhibition in Shepparton (in regional Victoria),” she says.
“But 2024 was my big year of becoming an artist. I had brain surgery the year before, and I found I couldn’t work in other areas anymore. So I went back to what I’ve always loved.”
But her dreams took a blow just as she was building her profile as an acrylic and watercolour artist.
Weeks before her first solo exhibition in July last year, hackers took over her business’ Instagram profile Art By Amanda Maree and began spamming her followers.
Glasson only discovered she’d become the victim of a cyber attack when a friend alerted her to a strange message that was sent from her account asking for money.
Not long after, Glasson was locked out of both her personal and business Instagram accounts.
“A message was being sent to all of my followers saying that something was wrong, and that I needed money to enter a competition or exhibition,” she recalls.
“It was not something I would ever do. But unfortunately one of my friends got sucked in and lost $100.”
Glasson says she had set both accounts up using the same email address, which allowed hackers to execute a double-pronged attack.
“It was a nightmare trying to get my accounts back, it took six months for Instagram to even allow me to set up a new business account,” she recalls.
“I lost a lot of followers because of that. I’m only just starting to rebuild now which is really, really frustrating.” She started from scratch with a new page for her business, art_by_amandamaree, but believes the incident has set her back.
“It looks like I haven’t been around for long which doesn’t inspire the same level of confidence,” she says.
“I had business cards made up before I got hacked, so I’ve had to had to scratch out the old Instagram account name and write over it.”
The incident in July 2024 left her with lingering concerns that it could happen again, but she has taken measures to secure her cyber security. This includes completing the Cyber Wardens course, introducing strong and different passwords across her online accounts, and enabling multi-factor authentication.
“I’ve definitely learned some valuable lessons from the experience, and doing the course was a good refresh,” she says.
Amanda is now enjoying throwing herself into art of all mediums, including clay and sculpture, with more peace of mind.
“Art is very cathartic and grounds me in a way, allowing me the freedom to express in a way the adult world has forgotten how to do… through play,” she says.
