Successful Milton Keynes business is wiped out by mystery hacker, wrecking years of hard work

Claire Walsh runs the CA Cosmetic and Aesthetics Training School in Fenny Stratford, coaching hundreds of people for a career in the beauty industry.

Over the years, the business has become highly successful, with 25,000 followers on social media and more than 500 five star reviews from grateful clients and students.

But on Monday an unknown hacker struck and somehow deleted every account run by CA’s social media manager.

“We’ve lost everything, absolutely everything,” said Claire. “We lost all our business accounts, all our personal accounts and anything that was linked to our email and phone numbers

"We have no history at all.”

"The years and years we have worked, the organic following growth, the business building...the great community work that we’ve done, we’ve lost it all… You name it, we have lost it. I am heartbroken. We are floored.”

Of its 25,000 followers, the company now has just two. Meanwhile, dozens of customers are trying to get in touch, thinking Claire has blocked them because there is no response.

Claire has looked into getting the accounts restored but the only way is to “pay a hacker to hack the hacker”, she says.

"It costs £4,000 per account. We had nine accounts.”

Instead, Claire has vowed to build up her business again, slowly and steadily. She is appealing for people to share and like her social media posts in a bid to restore her following.

And she has asked people who gave previous good reviews to take the trouble to write them again.

"Please bear with us. We are not ignoring you, we love you all,” she said. “We will grow. This time we will be bigger and better than before. Please help us.”

You can view Claire’s emotional appeal on Facebook here.

She and her staff at CA training school travel all over the country training their students in their own salons and clinics. They also have their own training clinic offering foundation courses, advance courses, teaching courses, pathway courses, cosmetic courses and injectable courses.