Facebook hacking — the takeover of your account by a criminal — can happen to anybody; especially, of course, those that are lax when it comes to security. When hackers get hold of your login details and personal information, they can use it to hijack your account and lock you out. They can then carry out activities including scamming you or your friends, blackmail and fraud or even exploiting passwords you’ve reused elsewhere to access other sites you use and steal your cash. This article looks at what to do if you suspect that your Facebook account has been hacked.
Did Your Facebook Get Hacked?
There are a number of signs that your Facebook has been hacked, most of which are easy to spot and show up pretty quickly. The most brutal is attempting to log in and discovering that you can no longer access your account at all.
Other signs that your Facebook has been hacked include changes to your account’s personal information: a new photo, birth date or location, for example. Meanwhile, people are often alerted to the fact that they’ve been hacked by their friends and family, who may get in touch to say that they’ve been receiving odd messages purportedly from you, perhaps asking for money. Sometimes, depending on whether you’ve enabled the platform’s login alerts, Facebook itself will contact you to tell you that an unexpected device has been accessing your account and asking you to confirm that it’s legitimate.
What To Do If Your Facebook Is Hacked
First and foremost, there’s no need to panic if you think your Facebook has been hacked: it’s usually fairly straightforward to sort it out and regain control. Clearing up any problems caused by a hacked account can be a little more complicated, though.
If your login details have been changed and you can’t access your account yourself, there’s a Facebook page where you can report what’s happened and get help. Issues can usually be resolved pretty quickly — generally within a few days. If you can still access your account, though, there’s a simple process you can go through yourself to regain control and lock any intruders out. Finally, once you’ve got your account back, you should tighten up your security for the future and alert your friends and family to be on their guard for any scam attempts.
Step 1: Check Whether You Can Still Access Your Account
The first step to recovering from a Facebook hack is to check whether you can still access your account yourself. If you can’t, you’ll need to go to a dedicated Facebook help page, where you’ll be asked 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 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, you can then 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, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Step 2: Check/Change Your Passwords Across The Internet
Despite advice, many people continue to reuse passwords from one site to another. And once you’ve changed your Facebook password, you should think about whether you’ve used the same one — or a very similar one — anywhere else.
Once hackers get hold of a password for a particular individual, they’ll often test it against other sites that the person may be using, such as banking or email, in the hopes that they can use it to hack into those too. And while it’s a time-consuming process to change all your passwords, it could save you a lot of grief in the long run. You should make sure that the new passwords are as strong as possible — using upper-case letters, numbers, symbols, et cetera — and then consider storing them securely in a password manager.
Step 3: Tighten-up Your Privacy Settings And Practices
If your Facebook account has been hacked, you’ll want to make sure that it never happens again — and this means tightening up your privacy settings and making sure that you stick to best practice in terms of security from now on.
You should consider adjusting your visibility to friends or friends of friends only — and be selective about those friends. Beware of friend requests from people you don’t know. Avoid opening links unless you’re absolutely certain they’re legitimate — you can check that a link is safe by hovering your cursor over the link to preview the URL. And you might consider using a virtual private network, which encrypts your internet traffic, hiding your login credentials and personal information from hackers. All these precautions are straightforward and simple, but could save you a lot of trouble later on.
Step 4: Let Your Contacts Know What Happened
While it may be embarrassing, it’s a good idea to let your contacts know what’s happened. Whoever hacked your Facebook may be hoping to use your account to contact your friends and family and carry out further attacks or commit fraud.
Posing as you, they may ask your contacts for personal information or passwords, send them fraudulent links to websites or competitions, or claim that there’s been some sort of emergency and ask for cash. Sending a warning message to everyone in your contacts list can put them on their guard and help them avoid becoming targets themselves. Warn them not to open any links they think were sent by you, and to tighten up their own privacy settings to be on the safe side.
How Can You Recover Your Facebook Account?
If you’re worrying that, after having been hacked, you might need to close your account altogether and create a new one, then rest assured: this shouldn’t be the case.
Once things are sorted out, you should get access to all your posts, photos and contacts once again. The exception is that if you’ve only recently discovered the hack and your account has been inactive for a long time, or if Facebook can’t confirm your ownership of it, the company could close it down. As we’ve seen, though, it’s usually possible to regain access to your Facebook account through the Settings & Privacy tab, or failing that through the Facebook help center.
Bottom Line
Discovering that your Facebook account has been hacked can be a devastating experience. Luckily, though, it’s usually easy to recover your account and keep it safe in future by taking a few simple steps.
