Facebook account has been hacked….

[tool]

So this morning I discovered that I couldn’t log in to Facebook on my phone for the obligatory scroll through all of the nonsense.

Somebody has obviously hacked it, taken it over, changed my password, profile picture etc.

This is a pain because I have a lot of business contacts on there etc. (like around 3,000 “friends”)

Any of my attempts to recover it so far have been futile. Has anyone else been through this and what did you do?

[Lornce]

Have you tried just changing the password?

[CBintheNorth]

Sounds like the perfect excuse to dump Facebook and never look back...

[Trochu]

Originally Posted by Lornce

Have you tried just changing the password?

Probably can't change the password if he can't log in.

[Scott N]

My account got hacked a few years ago, and while it took a day or two, I was able to recover my account. I can't remember exactly what I needed to provide, but Facebook has a webpage regarding hacked accounts that resolved my issue.

[elkhunter11]

If you have a phone number listed, and they haven't changed it, you can have the password reset, they send the link to your phone.

[Wes_G]

Good luck, I had both my facebook and email accounts hacked. Facebook was of little help as my recovery email had also been hacked, and its impossible to actually get anyone to help you. I would recommend notifying some of your closer friends and relatives about this as whoever hacked me immediately tried to pose as me in conversations and tried scamming some and even tried to blackmail my wife. I had everyone that was willing report my account as being hacked and to the best of my knowledge it has been shut down. Hopefully you have better results than I did.

If I can give you any advice it would be to set up multi factor authentication for every online account that you can and never use the same passwords for anything.

[Stinky Buffalo]

Reach out to Facebook and tell them what's up - they should be able to help you. They see this all the time. See here: https://www.facebook.com/help/203305893040179

Also do a thorough virus and malware scan on your computer, to ensure that there's no gremlins harvesting secrets from your computer. MalwareBytes would be my first choice.

Originally Posted by Wes_G

If I can give you any advice it would be to set up multi factor authentication for every online account that you can and never use the same passwords for anything.

This! MFA will basically send a text to your phone when you log in to your account to verify that it's you. Alternatively, many can use Google Authenticator and/or Microsoft Authenticator. Adobe has its own.

And use a password generator/password keyvault along with multi-factor authentication. That way you can use complex passwords. Norton Password Manager is free, and you can also use the password manager built into the iPhone, if that's the kind of phone you have. These will generate cryptic passwords that are very hard to hack, but you won't need to remember them because the password manager will store and retrieve them for you. You will need to ensure that you secure the password manager very well!

There's browser extensions that let you use these password managers on your PC as well (For Norton an iCloud).

Alternatively, there's a school of thought that it's better to use phrases instead of passwords. These are easy to remember, but harder to hack, e.g. "Monica hunts mosquitoes with #2 Mustads". Just need to keep them bizarre but memorable and put some punctuation in there. Many password fields support these now, and it's being rolled out at the

Go through all of your passwords and change them too... Especially your Google/Microsoft passwords (the ones you use for your browsers). And set up multi-factor authentication for all of the ones that support it.

[Lornce]

Originally Posted by Trochu

Probably can't change the password if he can't log in.

Happened to me I just went to the log in page and requested a new password, got a link to change it by email. If that doesn't work then contacting Facebook directly will.

[pikergolf]

Originally Posted by CBintheNorth

Sounds like the perfect excuse to dump Facebook and never look back...

Facebook is the advertising for a lot of small businesses.

[Nova]

You could have a battle on your hands. A friend of mine had his account hacked several years ago. The person who hacked it is impersonating him, pretending he made it big in bitcoin using some sort of algorithm software that he is now selling. It was pretty obvious to me from the first post that it wasn't him posting, but I'm sure whoever hacked it has managed to scam a few people.

My friend tried for about a year to get the account back and gave up. Did everything he could in dealing with facebook, had everyone he talked to report his account as compromised. Facebook refused to do anything.

[Cross Eyed Cowboy]

Lesson Learned: two-factor authentication is offered for a reason, it may not be a bullet proof security measure but in almost all cases, better than nothing.

[Selkirk]

.
My FB account hasn't been hacked, but it's been 'Frozen' for over a week now. I'm logged in, but I can't scroll up or down, and I can't logout.

Near the top of the screen FB has posted this message . . .

"We're sorry, there's a technical problem with this feature. We're working on getting it fixed."

.
They don't mention what feature was involved, and my FB account remains open, but Frozen.

Anyone else ever have a problem like this with FB ❓

Selkirk

[Wes_G]

Originally Posted by Nova

You could have a battle on your hands. A friend of mine had his account hacked several years ago. The person who hacked it is impersonating him, pretending he made it big in bitcoin using some sort of algorithm software that he is now selling. It was pretty obvious to me from the first post that it wasn't him posting, but I'm sure whoever hacked it has managed to scam a few people.

My friend tried for about a year to get the account back and gave up. Did everything he could in dealing with facebook, had everyone he talked to report his account as compromised. Facebook refused to do anything.

This sounds a lot like what happened to me. They are beyond useless to deal with, even when you report posts that are obviously scams. They do not take them down as they "do not go against our community standards".