Facebook Account Stolen

dr_p_manning

Help,

My wife has had her own Facebook profile hacked and stolen. Now someone has changed her name and listed her as someone who works for a charity but all the images remain the same.

There are a lot fo images of our kids, friends, home etc on her page, not to mention private messages and it's extremely concerning.

Facebook won't do anything about it. They say it doesn't violate their T&C's which is absolutely shocking.

Is there anything we can do?

Thanks 

pbartlett

of course it violates their t&c - one of the more important ones being that you must use your real name, dob etc. Or have they changed everything so that it is their real.details on your wife's account?

[Deleted User]

Few steps you can take to regain access to a Facebook account:
1. Is the email address still associated with the account or not?
2. When somebody changes an email address on a Facebook account - you will receive emails from Facebook notifying you of that and also providing detailed instructions about how to report it if you didn't make that change.
3. Check for them emails now.
4. If you can't find them, it is possible your email account was compromised and the person taking over the Facebook account deleted them.
5. Or your email address is still associated with that account and therefore you can request a password reset now.
6. So if the email address is no longer associated with the account AND you can't see the emails from Facebook telling you that the email address was changed then your email account is compromised and you must change the password immediately.

Then come back here to state which of the above scenarios has happened.

More importantly though, you say it has lots a personal images and private messages so you should treat your account with an appropriate level of security - ensure you have 2 factor authentication and use a complex password on your Facebook account to prevent this happening in the first place!

You were not "hacked" - Facebook security is excellent, it is one of the following has happened:

1. Sloppy password hygiene - using a simple password or the same one across multiple sites that has been compromised elsewhere. If the same password is used elsewhere - change it immediately on those sites.

2. Email account compromised to gain access to a password reset for Facebook and maybe other accounts - you should immediately change the email accounts password to something complex and enable 2 factor authentication.

3. Social engineering - clicking on links / games etc on Facebook that have engineered a password capture by appearing to be Facebook requesting your login details when in fact it was a dodgy site.

These are not hackers bashing away at a keyboard finding a sophisticated way to get in your account - true hackers spend their time doing cybercrime that pays money. People who steal social media accounts are lazy and unsophisticated because it is incredibly easy to con somebody into entering their credentials or finding compromised passwords dumped from other websites.

Laz123

The problem with FB is some of the moderators are fairly amateurish and work in various countries, some of which are 3rd world like the Philippines.

dr_p_manning

Deleted_User said:

Few steps you can take to regain access to a Facebook account:
1. Is the email address still associated with the account or not?
2. When somebody changes an email address on a Facebook account - you will receive emails from Facebook notifying you of that and also providing detailed instructions about how to report it if you didn't make that change.
3. Check for them emails now.
4. If you can't find them, it is possible your email account was compromised and the person taking over the Facebook account deleted them.
5. Or your email address is still associated with that account and therefore you can request a password reset now.
6. So if the email address is no longer associated with the account AND you can't see the emails from Facebook telling you that the email address was changed then your email account is compromised and you must change the password immediately.

Then come back here to state which of the above scenarios has happened.

More importantly though, you say it has lots a personal images and private messages so you should treat your account with an appropriate level of security - ensure you have 2 factor authentication and use a complex password on your Facebook account to prevent this happening in the first place!

You were not "hacked" - Facebook security is excellent, it is one of the following has happened:

1. Sloppy password hygiene - using a simple password or the same one across multiple sites that has been compromised elsewhere. If the same password is used elsewhere - change it immediately on those sites.

2. Email account compromised to gain access to a password reset for Facebook and maybe other accounts - you should immediately change the email accounts password to something complex and enable 2 factor authentication.

3. Social engineering - clicking on links / games etc on Facebook that have engineered a password capture by appearing to be Facebook requesting your login details when in fact it was a dodgy site.

These are not hackers bashing away at a keyboard finding a sophisticated way to get in your account - true hackers spend their time doing cybercrime that pays money. People who steal social media accounts are lazy and unsophisticated because it is incredibly easy to con somebody into entering their credentials or finding compromised passwords dumped from other websites.

Thank you for your response. 

This person who took over her account is now selling iPads to people and not delivering them. People are now being scammed.

1) The email associated with her Facebook is in a Yahoo account she can't get access to and can't remember the password. Very annoying as it's also the email for her Apple ID !

It's likely my wife clicked on a very dodgy link and that's who they got access to her Facebook.