My Facebook account was hacked, now what?

You may have had this happen to you or more likely you know someone who has started ‘posting’ weird stuff or sending out strange e-mails from Facebook.  You called them up and they have no idea what you’re talking about.  They log in and check it out and find out that they can’t get into their account.  They try to login and keep getting strange errors and/or are told they have entered their wrong password.

This has happened an untold amount of times.  From someone tricking someone into giving their password and/or user name or posting something on their page that when they click on it takes them to a fake ‘Facebook’ login page where they enter their user id and password again.

No worries.  You think you’ve been hacked or someone you know has been hacked?  It’s a pain in the butt, but fear not, there is a solution.

Facebook Help Center has a number of good resources along with a “My Account Is Hacked” page.

First off, make sure you don’t go crying wolf, verify by going to
https://www.facebook.com

You might recognize that there’s an ‘s’ right after the ‘http’.  You saw that correctly.

This is a ‘secure’ version of the Facebook login site.  Unless someone has a keystroke logger (definition by PC Magazine) or is doing man-in-the-middle attacks (definition by Techopedia) with a decent brute force password cracker or decryption program, you’ll most likely be fairly secure logging into Facebook from this site.

If you can log into the site with your user name and password, first thing you should do is change your password.  You can change your password by following these simple steps:

Click on the drop down arrow beside home and select Account Settings:

Once there, click on the Edit link on the Password line:

Enter your current password and your new passwords and click on Save Changes.  Your password is now changed and you can update the password on all of your gadgets and/or connected devices.

Now for the hard part.

If you actually have been hacked and can’t log in, first try resetting your password.  When you are at the Facebook main page, click on the “Forgot My Password” link.  This will take you to a page that allows you to reset your password via e-mail or another way if you have previously set it up.

And if you’re still having issues after this, you can follow the following links to Facebooks Security and Account is Hacked pages here:

Facebook Help Center:  https://www.facebook.com/help/search/?q=hacked

Facebook Account is Hacked Page:  https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=216811595004794

Facebook Account Security Page: https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=203917589649396

You could also do a simple Google search on the phrase “My Facebook Account was hacked, what do I do”

From here is the slow process of getting things back to where they should be.  Or maybe you caught it in time and just need to delete a few posts.  Either way, it could be a quick and easy fix or you could be in for a long hard road up to and including deleting your FB account and re-opening a new one.  Hopefully, it’s not that far gone, but something that I’ve lived by “hope for the best and expect the worst”.

Here’s hoping that you can get things back under control.

Please let me know if I left something out or if there’s a better or easier way to ‘un-hack’ yourself with Facebook.

Also, let me know in the comments section if you’ve had this happen to you and how you got it fixed, or if there’s any other accounts you’d like me to outline for you.

Also, keep watching for upcoming posts about staying safe on Facebook and online as well as ways to un-hack other accounts.

Safe Browsing.

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~ by Normanomicon on July 30, 2012.