We hear about online hackers all the time. It is in the news almost daily. We see it in our own Facebook accounts when friends unknowingly get hacked and then accidentally spam their entire friend list. How many times have you seen a status update on Facebook that says, “I was hacked. Do not click on any links from me.” or something along those lines? We are warned about hacking and are given proper instructions on how to prevent it from happening to us. I usually pay attention to these tips from Facebook Security but sometimes I wonder if the majority of other people realize how important and valuable these tips really are.
About a week ago, I received an email at an email address that has NEVER been associated with Facebook saying that the address had been added as a Facebook user. The email went on to say that if this change had not been made to my account then I should just disregard the email. I did just that; I disregarded the email. I did not think anything of it because nothing happened for ten days after that.
On the tenth day, I started getting email notifications at that email address for my own fan pages as well as other people’s fan pages. Why would I get emails when people I do not know were posting on a fan page that I did not own? I was stumped and could not figure it out. I felt as though my security was compromised, as was the security of the person whose fan page notifications I was receiving. The emails came with an unsubscribe button at the bottom telling me that I had to click on the link to no longer receive the emails from Facebook. I clicked on the link not even thinking about the fact that the link could have taken me to a dangerous site. The site did happen to be Facebook’s but clicking unsubscribe did not make the emails stop.
I reached out to my network and asked for all kinds of internet security advice because I was very concerned about this problem. Terry Crosby, social media strategist and trainer, gave me loads of leads and I followed each of them to try to fix the problem. The most helpful link was one that secured my account. If you EVER
think that your account has been compromised, I suggest that you follow the steps found in this link.
After securing my account, I felt more safe knowing that my Facebook password had been changed, my email passwords had been changed and that I needed to confirm my computer’s identity when signing in. I was pretty confident that my problem was solved. As a test, I had a friend write a post on the fan page for which I was receiving the email notifications. Again, this fan page was not mine so there was no reason that I should have been receiving the emails. Unfortunately, I still received an email notification so the problem had not been fixed.
I called the fan page owner to let her know what was happening and we began to piece it together. As it turned out, about a week and a half ago, she tried to make me the administrator of her page so that I could go in and do some quick work. Rather than adding me as a personal user as admin, she added what she thought was the email address that I had associated with Facebook. Although I use a different email address for all Facebook mail, Facebook made the NEW address the administrator of her page. I did not even know that was possible! I never would have thought that an email address that had never been registered with Facebook could be added to a business page! I actually do not think that this should even be possible so I have brought it to Facebook’s attention.
I wanted to tell you all about the incident so that you don’t get tangled up in a situation like this. I was quite worried when this was happening because I had no idea who had access to my account. While my friend and I were able to solve this problem on our own, once we realized what had happened, I strongly encourage all of you to take caution with your online security!
Has your Facebook account ever been hacked? What steps did you take to recover your online safety? Have you had success in reaching Facebook directly in dealing with security issues?
