Facebook Woes

byGwendolynPD

386 followers

Updated 9 years ago

This will be a lengthy post, but I hope it will be worth your time.

Some of you were aware when I was fighting with Facebook last week. I tried to share one of Kyle's training videos on my Facebook account, but Facebook would not accept it. I was accused of having malware and the only way I would be allowed to use my account was to first download and run Facebook's chosen anti-virus program. I researched the program, ESET, and found plenty of information that said it was okay to use. I still didn't like giving up my choices to Facebook's own affiliates, especially since I already had good malware programs and had run them.

I believed that Facebook was just being contrary because I'd tried to post a link with ad cookies onto my personal page. I still think that was probably the case. Anyone who has done business on Facebook for any length of time will tell you not to put affiliate links or calls to action onto a personal account.

And so I gave in and ran their program. I felt okay about it once it was said and done.

The next day, my friends began to PM me to tell me they were getting new friend requests from me. Oh, no! I've been hacked.

Did one thing have anything to do with the other?

At first I thought so, because I'm just that paranoid sometimes. However, I've come to believe that the timing was coincidental and that the simple rule is, Do NOT try to load affiliate links onto your personal page. Get a business page and drive the traffic to your own website. Keep your affiliate links on your own website where you have control. Social media is good advertising, but you have to be judicious in how you approach it. There are several trainings in WA to this effect, as well as several courses available through independent sources.

Now, about the hacker and how I fixed that problem…

Do you really pay attention to who sends you friend requests, or do you simply accept any request you get? You can set your boundaries on Facebook so that only friends of friends can request you. For personal reasons, I've always kept my settings on public. For the same reasons, I've always cautiously accepted any request I've received. Over the past several months, I've had quite a few requests from people I don't know, and when I looked at their profiles to see why I should accept them, I would find pretty much nothing. Opening a new account makes sense; friending complete strangers and no one else does not. Almost every time, the account holder would immediately begin to send personal messages with the same voice and the same rhetoric. I would then unfriend and block, and soon another would come along.

I do not know why this person was targeting me, but I still kind of think it was the same person with a different account each time. Or maybe it's a crazy gang of hack-flirters and it's just a game. Still, it's a haunting thing to realize that the voice was the same in each one.

And so, I believe my hacking experience was about this and not about the affiliate link, although I still caution: do not attempt to put affiliate links on your personal page. That hassle was not worth the trouble.

Now, what happened with the hacker? The first thing I did was to change my password. The second thing I did was to try to follow Facebook's problem reportage system, which did nothing but tell me to change my password. Which I did yet again thinking I could move onto the actual reportage and demand that the other account be closed. Didn't happen that way.

The next thing I did was to post the fact that I had been hacked and warn my friends not to accept the request they believed was coming from me. (What an interesting way to find out who reads your posts!)

The next thing I did was to find the fake account and report it as a fake. A few hours later, Facebook messaged me that there was nothing wrong with the fake account and they were not going to take action.

One of my old friends from Georgia is a computer expert. He came into my discussion thread and told me that the fake account was still active and that several of my friends were accepting the request. He said to follow Facebook's reportage system and they should then close the account.

I did so again, but I found a way to send an actual message to Facebook. (They do not make it easy!) And then I created a new cover picture for my real account admonishing everyone to read my lengthy post about the situation, figuring that if I was hacked others might be as well.

Here is what I posted. I hope it can help you if you ever need it.

“Many of you received a friend request from me yesterday. I did not send this; my account was duplicated, and all of the new friend requests were sent by an imposter. Several you you have had this to happen in the past as well, and I know there is a system to report hacked accounts. However, it's a bit like running through rabbit holes, and it's not as satisfactory as it should be.

“The first thing I'm going to tell you to do is to locate the url of the fake account. To do this, type your exact name into the search box in the upper left of your homepage—it's the same place you would search for a friend or some topic of discussion. You should see two accounts for yourself. Hold down your control button and click on one. Then hold down your control button and click on the other. You should have opened both accounts in separate tabs. Look at both. You should be able to tell which is the new account. It should only contain a few of your friends, and the content should have almost nothing in it. It looks like a new account. Also, you will be logged into the real account but not the fake one. When you are sure which it is, copy the url.

“Now, you can go to your settings in your home page: click on the little downward arrow in the upper right-hand part of your tool bar. At the bottom of the list, click on 'report a problem.' Look for 'image privacy rights' in the list at your left. Click on that and then look for 'hacked account' in the center and click. Then you'll get another option to choose 'hacked accounts.'

“Next, you will choose whatever seems appropriate. The outcome will be pretty much the same. They will try to explain what happened. (Guess what, someone might have hacked your account.) Okay, so what do we do? Facebook will offer to help you to secure your account. This basically means that they will take you through a process to help you to change your password. I hope you did this first thing and didn't need Facebook to walk you through it. However, do change that password. This is important, but it does not get rid of the bogus account.

“And it tells you to send anyone else who was hacked to the 'hacked accounts' section. If you click on that, you'll go back to where you started from. So, don't do that. Instead, follow the next step that asks if you were satisfied with their help. Click on the frowny face. They will ask you why you are dissatisfied. Do not choose their existing answers, but choose 'other.' That gives you a dialog box where you can finally tell them something. Tell them that your account was hacked and that you have changed your password but that you want the fraudulent account to be deleted. At this point, you will paste the url of the fraudulent account into the message. Don't just rely on Facebook to decide which is the wrong account. Tell them that this is a fake account which contains your image and name and some personal information and that you want it to be deleted. Click the submit button.

“Will it work? I'm still waiting for the fake account to go away, but this is the procedure, and so you should take these steps.

“Now, I want to ask a favor of you who have the time.

“If you have already accepted the fake request, please go to the fake account—it is at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010642361842&fref=ts -- and click on the three little dots to the upper right in the cover page. They are right beside the 'message' tab. In the drop-down, click on report and follow the clicks to 'report this account' and 'this is a fake account.' You'll submit this and can then ask them to block the account. Or just submit it for review and then go back to the three little dots and block the account.

“I've already done this twice, but without the blocking because I need to see if it's still active. They responded that there was nothing wrong with the account, and of course I've argued, but the account still exists.

“If lots of people would report the account, perhaps they will remove it. Either way, I want to make sure that my real friends are disassociated with this fake account. Facebook is not greatly concerned about it, but I am.

“Please do two things whether or not you have accepted the friend request from https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010642361842&fref=ts :

1- report it as a fake account;

2- block the account.

“Thank you for taking the time. I hope this will be helpful to anyone else who has been hacked. In fact, contact me if this has happened to you, and I will be glad to take these steps for you as well. Every fake account should be reported judiciously. My hope is that, if several people will report the bad account, Facebook will get the message and remove it.”

But this was not all. I could still find the bad account. And so my next step was to open that account and go into the friends list for that account. By this time, about 120 of my friends had been tricked into joining this imposter's ranks.

And so, I created the following message and began to send it independently to everyone in that list.

“My Facebook account was hacked, and it appears that you received and accepted a friend request that you believed was from me. It was not. I've followed every procedure, but Facebook has yet to remedy the situation. I wanted to alert you to the fact that the recent request was fake and that the account you friended is not real. I don't know who is behind it. You are still my friend on my real account.

“Will you please do this for me? It will benefit you as well.

1- Please go to this account
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010642361842&fref=ts ;

2 - find the three little dots beside the 'message' tab in the lower right of the cover photo section;

3 - click the three dots and choose to report the account as a fake account;

4 - block the account (this is not a real friend to you.)

“Thank you for taking the time. See more information on my real page. I hope this will be helpful to anyone else who has been hacked. In fact, contact me if this has happened to you, and I will be glad to take these steps for you as well. Every fake account should be reported judiciously. My hope is that, if several people will report the bad account, Facebook will get the message and remove it. “

The result: I was about a third of the way through that massive list of individuals—doing my vigilant paste and send-- when things got strange and started going away. I reloaded the page, and it was gone!

I went back to my real account and a good 15 or 20 friends had answered my messages to tell me they were on it. That's what it took. We had to bombard Facebook to get them to understand that the account was bad and had to be removed. It wasn't enough that I had asked them to disrupt the theft of my identity. I had to get an army together, and that army did shine. Within probably 10 minutes, the bogus account was gone...something I couldn't achieve on my own in over 24 hours.