It’s not always immediately obvious that your Facebook account has been hacked, but there are … [+]
It’s one of those heart-sink moments: the suspicion that your Facebook has been hacked. Someone has got hold of your login and password and taken over your account. Messages that you haven’t sent may be going out to the friends and family in your contacts list, and your personal details, such as photo or location, may have been changed. Meanwhile, if you’ve reused your Facebook password elsewhere, any other accounts and apps that you’re using may be vulnerable to the hackers too. This article looks at how to tell if your Facebook has been hacked, and what you should do if it has.
How To Check If Your Facebook Has Been Hacked
The first step to check if your Facebook has been hacked is to try to log in to your account. If you can’t, you’ve probably got a problem, with the hackers having taken control. There’s a Facebook page where you can report the problem and check what’s going on.
If you are still able to access your account yourself, it’s a quick and straightforward process to find out if you’ve been hacked. You should open up your account and first go to Settings & Privacy, then Settings, then Password and Security and finally See All. This will show you where you’re logged in — and whether any other devices are using your account too. You can check to see whether there are any on the list that you don’t recognize — and if so, your Facebook has probably been hacked.
Hacking Sign Example 1: Personal Information Changes
One common — and very obvious — sign that your Facebook has been hacked is that your account’s personal information changes in some way, perhaps with your profile picture, birth date or location being replaced. If you find that the email address associated with your account has changed, this means you’ve fallen victim to an account takeover attack.
Changing your personal information allows hackers to do several things, including using your account to endorse illegitimate websites or carry out fraud. Changing the email address and password associated with the account allows the hacker to take control of the account altogether, preventing you from logging in to Facebook yourself. Once they’ve done this, they can steal your identity to, for example, commit scams against your friends or strangers, or set up credit cards in your name. They can also post malicious or embarrassing material in your name, potentially leading to blackmail.
Hacking Sign Example 2: Friends And/Or Family Alert You
Often, people are alerted to the fact that their Facebook account has been hacked when friends and family get in touch about odd posts or messages from your account — messages that you didn’t send yourself.
Friend requests may be sent to people you don’t know, and posts you didn’t create may appear on your timeline. Activities like these allow the hackers to do a number of things to scam your friends and others. They can spread disinformation, spam your contact list with fake and fraudulent offers or competitions, or — a common one, this — lure your friends and family into sending them money under the pretext of an emergency. If the scammers succeed in persuading your contacts to click on fraudulent links, they can potentially steal their identities too and start the whole process all over again with new victims.
Hacking Sign Example 3: A Message From Facebook Itself
The first sign that your Facebook has been hacked is sometimes a message from Facebook itself — depending on the way in which your account has been set up, and whether you’ve enabled the site’s optional login alerts.
The company keeps track of the location where users log into their accounts, along with the devices they use when doing so. And when a login attempt is made from an unusual location or device and you’ve enabled Facebook’s login alerts, you might receive an email from the company warning you about the unusual activity and asking for confirmation that it’s above board. If you do get a message like this, you can check whether you have in fact been hacked by going to the Settings & Privacy, and following the steps described above.
Hacking Sign Example 4: Facebook Cloning
Not everything that looks like a hack actually is one. Sometimes, your friends and family may get a new friend request from you. When they accept, they’ll start to get messages apparently from you, but which you never sent, and which don’t show up on your account. What’s actually happening here is Facebook cloning.
What the scammers have done is to set up a completely separate Facebook account, using your profile photo and other public information about you. They will then use some pretext to persuade your real friends to accept their friend request — and, after this, they’re able to send all sorts of scam messages, with fraudulent links for example. One very common scam is to message your contacts claiming to be you. The scammer will say that they’ve had some sort of emergency, and ask for funds to be transferred. You can check if this has happened and report it to Facebook.
What Should You Do If Your Facebook Account Is Hacked?
If you find you can’t access your account, you should go straight to the relevant Facebook help page, where you’ll be asked for details about what’s happening and, depending on the answers, led through the process to recover your account.
If you can still access your account yourself, you should go through the process listed above — go to Settings & Privacy, then Settings, then Password and Security and finally See All. If this reveals devices using your account that you haven’t authorized, it’s simple to remove them yourself. Just click on the three dots next to the unwanted device, click Secure Account and then boot the invader out by hitting Log Out. The hacker will then lose access to your account. You should also change your password by going to Settings, Passwords and Security, Passwords and Change Password. If the hacker’s changed your password, you can use the Forgot Password? Process to get it back. You should also contact everyone in your contacts list to warn them to be on their guard.
How Can You Prevent Hackings On Facebook?
Facebook recommends keeping both your email address and mobile phone number up to date so that it’s easier to recover your account. You should make sure you have a strong password, and can also enable two-factor authentication as an additional line of defense.
Tighter privacy settlings also make you less likely to be hacked, so consider adjusting your visibility to friends only. And use caution at all times. Don’t open links unless you’re certain they’re legitimate — you can check that a link is safe by hovering your cursor over the link to preview the URL. Be careful what you reveal to people you don’t know — indeed, be wary of accepting friend requests from strangers — and never reveal your login credentials to anyone. You could consider using a virtual private network, which encrypts your internet traffic, hiding your login credentials and personal information from hackers.
Bottom Line
It’s not always immediately obvious that your Facebook account has been hacked — but there are certain telling signs. Keep vigilant, and you should be able to spot anything suspicious, and move quickly to recover and secure your account.