Facebook account may have been hacked

LilacLouisa

Hi

Please excuse me if this is not the right place.

My daughter has a Facebook account, as have I. This morning she finds that the thumbnail photo which shows at the side of her comments is of someone completely unknown.

We are unsure what to do, we have looked at the pages where you type in any problems, but we can't see any helpful advice.

Could anyone advise what do do please?

victor2

Change her password and change the photo. If other changes continue to happen then you'll have to contact them, which will probably fall on deaf ears, but can't suggest anything else.

LilacLouisa

victor2 wrote: »

Change her password and change the photo. If other changes continue to happen then you'll have to contact them, which will probably fall on deaf ears, but can't suggest anything else.

Hi

Thank you for replying, we will go and try that now. :-)

cgk1

Check what applications she has approved - she might have approved a spam app.

Mark_In_Hampshire

It could be a technical fault. However, most people when selecting passwords usually choose something that the people around them can guess easily after a few tries. I wouldn't mind betting that if I tried, I could access the accounts of some of my friends by guessing their passwords. Some sites then make this worse by forcing you to choose a password reminder question to which just about everyone who knows you knows the answer to like "Favourite Pet", "First Car" etc

So do change the password and make sure it's secure - one upper case letter, some numbers, minimum 8 characters are some guidelines.

LilacLouisa

Mark_In_Hampshire wrote: »

It could be a technical fault. However, most people when selecting passwords usually choose something that the people around them can guess easily after a few tries. I wouldn't mind betting that if I tried, I could access the accounts of some of my friends by guessing their passwords. Some sites then make this worse by forcing you to choose a password reminder question to which just about everyone who knows you knows the answer to like "Favourite Pet", "First Car" etc

So do change the password and make sure it's secure - one upper case letter, some numbers, minimum 8 characters are some guidelines.

Thank you, we are trying the things you have all suggested, and will be keeping a careful eye out for any further developments. Sadly, it makes you a bit suspicious of new contacts and established ones. We are at the point of wondering if it is worth it!

Once again, thank you all for your help x

juice0105

You should also change the password to the email account that is associated with the facebook account. If I had your email account password, I could reset your facebook password.

edhunter_2

Hi,

In addition to changing the password to something secure. I would also suggest you enable "https" in facebook settings.

Unfortunately, it is not enabled by default and if you ever use public wifi i.e. using WIRELESS internet in a coffee shop or library etc you would not believe how easy it is to access other peoples facebook, twitter, flickr etc, regardless of how secure your password is.

You can find out why you should enable https in facebook (and indeed anywhere you can) here:

lifehacker.com/5672313/sniff-out-user-credentials-at-wi+fi-hotspots-with-firesheep

You can find instructions how to enable https here:

lifehacker.com/5748697/how-to-keep-your-facebook-secure-by-enabling-https

Hope that helps