More than 100 people were emailed from Mrs Thomson's private address asking for help because, the email claimed, while holidaying in England, she lost her purse and needed money to pay for accommodation and the trip home.

Mrs Thomson was well and truly in Australia when the hoax email went out, and while she is flattered at the amount of concern it has generated, she is now at a loss as to how to get her email account back.

Mrs Thomson said in hindsight she would never have provided her password to an email that appeared to have come from her mail provider, Yahoo, but admits at the time it appeared authentic.

"The only thing was a couple of grammatical errors in the wording," she said.

"They even sent me one to myself, at the council email address. I received a lot of phone calls on Monday and council received a lot of phone calls too to see if I was alright.

"The most frustrating thing is I'm discovering the service providers don't give a damn."

One of the giveaways within the hoax email that was sent out were mistakes in grammar and spelling, something Mrs Thomson takes particular care with.

The extent of the invasion into her email account by the invader saw Mrs Thomson's usual greeting and farewell copied and used at the end of the scammed version.

"It is really important, people need to understand that your service provider will never ask you for your password," she said.

"Regardless of how professional a page looks and how authentic a page looks, don't give out your password."

After receiving the email, one person even called Mrs Thomson to offer her the funds to get back to the country.