recovering a hacked facebook account

[scottyno]

Had a friend get her facebook account hacked last night, email phone number etc all changed so she has no way to access it. When she posted about it on twitter she pretty much immediately got 30 spam tweets likely either from scammers or the hackers themselves offering to help her get her account back if she contacts them, in exchange for a lot of money I'm sure. It seems that in general with facebook it' nearly impossible to actually get in contact with a real person, and they seem pretty bad at stopping these hacks. Anyone know of a way to actually get in contact with a real person that could actually do something?

 

[edoug]

Have your friend check her email for a facebook link. They should've sent one when the hacker changed her info.
View: https://www.facebook.com/help/203305893040179

https://www.facebook.com/hacked

 

[scottyno]

Have your friend check her email for a facebook link. They should've sent one when the hacker changed her info.
View: https://www.facebook.com/help/203305893040179

https://www.facebook.com/hacked

I think they did, but because this happened while she was asleep by the time she actually saw the email the hackers had already changed everything which made the auto email facebook had sent useless.

 

[Gehenna]

This actually just happened to one of the directors on our non-profit's board and it has been DAYS and she still doesn't have her Facebook recovered, which means she has not been able to assist with the moderating of our rescue's Facebook group. They were able to change her phone and e-mail before she was able to intervene through the auto-email as well.

I know she apparently got to some point where she had to send a picture of her ID in but still nothing in terms of getting her account access back.

Would definitely love to know if there's anything else she can do.

 

[edoug]

I think they did, but because this happened while she was asleep by the time she actually saw the email the hackers had already changed everything which made the auto email facebook had sent useless.

Oh man, that really sucks. She needs to get her friends and family to unfriend her until there is a solution.

 

[bsj]

I am having SO much trouble with something like this.

My dad is in a nursing home and has dementia. Not total dementia, he just has trouble with short term memory. He also has a Facebook account. One that I set up for him. He used it for a while, but since he has been in the nursing home hasnt. He recently asked me to update it just to say things like he isnt working any more, and to give people some of his contact info. I had ALL of the right info. I had the login password. I had the email account password he/we used. I didnt get anything wrong.

However, when I tried to login it gave me one of those "we need to verify your login" messages. However, rather than sending me a code, the ONLY option they gave me was to call 3 friends offline, of 5 THEY chose, and have them go to a link, get a code, call me with it, and then enter it in the page. Problem is, only one of those people is someone my dad is actual friends with. The other 4 are either people he hasnt spoken to in many many years or businesses that he "friended" years ago that were really "pages" in profile form, and not actual people.

So..we never locked ourselves out, but we are locked out. Sigh.

 

[djbayko]

I am having SO much trouble with something like this.

My dad is in a nursing home and has dementia. Not total dementia, he just has trouble with short term memory. He also has a Facebook account. One that I set up for him. He used it for a while, but since he has been in the nursing home hasnt. He recently asked me to update it just to say things like he isnt working any more, and to give people some of his contact info. I had ALL of the right info. I had the login password. I had the email account password he/we used. I didnt get anything wrong.

However, when I tried to login it gave me one of those "we need to verify your login" messages. However, rather than sending me a code, the ONLY option they gave me was to call 3 friends offline, of 5 THEY chose, and have them go to a link, get a code, call me with it, and then enter it in the page. Problem is, only one of those people is someone my dad is actual friends with. The other 4 are either people he hasnt spoken to in many many years or businesses that he "friended" years ago that were really "pages" in profile form, and not actual people.

So..we never locked ourselves out, but we are locked out. Sigh.

What a strange, intrusive way to verify someone.

 

[Gehenna]

I did some Googling after seeing this post and responding and it looks like a LOT of people are having this issue and most are completely fucked. Facebook seems to not give a shit about helping people in this situation.

 

[scottyno]

I did some Googling after seeing this post and responding and it looks like a LOT of people are having this issue and most are completely fucked. Facebook seems to not give a shit about helping people in this situation.

And every one that posts about it on twitter gets inundated with dozens of spam/scambots telling them to call/text/dm someone that they guarnatee can fix it from accounts that literally only message people telling them ways to supposedly unlock a hacked account.

It's presumably happening more recently because of that huge dump of various info from millions of users that was posted not that long ago

 

[scottyno]

Apparently my friend got her account back today, not sure how yet, but if she figured out a helpful workaround or who to talk to I'll post it in here to hopefully help others out in a similar situation

 

[Gehenna]

Apparently my friend got her account back today, not sure how yet, but if she figured out a helpful workaround or who to talk to I'll post it in here to hopefully help others out in a similar situation

Great news! Please do share when you find out.

 

[scottyno]

Great news! Please do share when you find out.

Unfortunately it sounds like the solution is either hope to get lucky with the form or know someone who knows someone that works there and is in a position to pull some strings and get yours handled faster, so great for her, but not so great for the situation as a whole.

 

[scottyno]

There's some way to get to a page where you can scan your ID to prove you're you if you say you don't have access to any other ways to verify your account since the hacker changed everything which seems to expediate the process some, but it's apparently not easy to get to. I guess you need to try to change your password and then click somewhere that you have no way to verify the change and it'll get you to the ID page.

 

[bsj]

There's some way to get to a page where you can scan your ID to prove you're you if you say you don't have access to any other ways to verify your account since the hacker changed everything which seems to expediate the process some, but it's apparently not easy to get to. I guess you need to try to change your password and then click somewhere that you have no way to verify the change and it'll get you to the ID page.

yeah this is what I got for my dad. now I need to go to Boston from NJ just to get a picture of his ID

 

[scottyno]

yeah this is what I got for my dad. now I need to go to Boston from NJ just to get a picture of his ID

Anyone there that can either scan or take a pic of his id and then email it to you?

 

[bsj]

Anyone there that can either scan or take a pic of his id and then email it to you?

Nope. I'm not sure he even knows where his wallet is. He's in a nursing home and has long stretches where he forgets things.

 

[sox311]

Has anyone been able to overcome this yet? My wife's facebook was hacked about four months ago. They changed all her info and we have no way to access it. And no one can help or even get a remote shot at fixing it.

Two form authentication or some other more detailed password is a must now it seems...

 

[Hatcher Steals Home]

Well I will bump this on behalf of my wife. A month or so ago someone took over her account, changed the name, changed all her login info, and now just appears to run her profile under a new name with new…everything. It’s really odd.
We’ve been through all the Facebook/hacked info and nothing works. When she reports the account as hacked/imposter she can’t verify it’s her because everything else is changed. She either did not get an email when the infor changed OR as part of the hack they also got her email and deleted that. While I can see that happening, this honestly seems more like the oddest bug even more than a hack and takeover.
We can’t do anything on our end to get her account back. Any ideas??

 

[AlNipper49]

Well I will bump this on behalf of my wife. A month or so ago someone took over her account, changed the name, changed all her login info, and now just appears to run her profile under a new name with new…everything. It’s really odd.
We’ve been through all the Facebook/hacked info and nothing works. When she reports the account as hacked/imposter she can’t verify it’s her because everything else is changed. She either did not get an email when the infor changed OR as part of the hack they also got her email and deleted that. While I can see that happening, this honestly seems more like the oddest bug even more than a hack and takeover.
We can’t do anything on our end to get her account back. Any ideas??

I bet that they got the email first. Make sure that she has multi factor on it but the Facebook may need some help from their support

 

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

Well I will bump this on behalf of my wife. A month or so ago someone took over her account, changed the name, changed all her login info, and now just appears to run her profile under a new name with new…everything. It’s really odd.
We’ve been through all the Facebook/hacked info and nothing works. When she reports the account as hacked/imposter she can’t verify it’s her because everything else is changed. She either did not get an email when the infor changed OR as part of the hack they also got her email and deleted that. While I can see that happening, this honestly seems more like the oddest bug even more than a hack and takeover.
We can’t do anything on our end to get her account back. Any ideas??

Do you know anyone who works at FB? We had a thread on this (well Insta) in the past - https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/hacked-instagram-account.35479/ - and what I found is that internal reports from FB are basically the only way to do this.

@Bleedred may have some tips depending on what happened with his son's account.

 

[wade boggs chicken dinner]

P.S. - this MSFT (nor sure why it was posted there) thread has someone's story on how she recovered her account: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/my-facebook-was-hacked-and-the-email-address/b295b500-9763-41cd-848b-f250ba7d38ea.

 

[Bleedred]

Do you know anyone who works at FB? We had a thread on this (well Insta) in the past - https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/hacked-instagram-account.35479/ - and what I found is that internal reports from FB are basically the only way to do this.

@Bleedred may have some tips depending on what happened with his son's account.

Notwithstanding all efforts, we never got any traction. He basically abandoned his old instagram account, let as many people as he could know that that account had been hacked, and he established a new account. Not entirely satisfying, but 90% of folks got the message and it was the best we could do.

 

[Hatcher Steals Home]

Thanks everyone. We don’t know anyone at Facebook, but we’ll keep trying to get in touch with them.

For those interested, here’s the link. It is very odd because as I said it almost looks more like a bug than a hack -

https://www.facebook.com/Antonio.silva537?mibextid=LQQJ4d

That’s not my wife but the account still has her history of check ins in Utah, mutual friends, etc. but otherwise literally just looks like someone else’s account.
Edit: it’s definitely hacked - we just noticed the person took her old posts and changed the photos on them, you can still see old “likes” on there from her friends but on “his” posts going back to 2019.

 

[cutman1000]

Bump of an old thread. My brother in law had his Facebook account stolen a few days ago - anyone ever figure out what to do?

 

[Murderer's Crow]

Nope, it’s gone.

 

[gtmtnbiker]

Bump of an old thread. My brother in law had his Facebook account stolen a few days ago - anyone ever figure out what to do?

Follow their help page. It can be recovered but it will take some time.

View: https://www.facebook.com/help/203305893040179

 

[cutman1000]

Thanks. I ended up reaching out to a high school friend who works for Meta. He took care of it.