Facebook account hacked

[Tom 1960]

Hey guys. I hope you can give me some assistance here maybe having dealt with this issue in the past. My account on Facebook was hacked overnight and both my email address and password has been changed. I have tried a number of options which include me providing a photo ID or some sort of documentation. A drivers license for instance. I have to admit that makes me nervous and balking at that right now. Any suggestions to get this account back up? They are asking for an alternative email but currently I have only one. This pisses me off and frankly if I can't find other options, perhaps its bye bye Facebook. That's last resort type of stuff. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

This sounds like someone is phishing you. How were you informed that this occurred?

I've never changed my E-mail, but any time I've changed my password, I needed a code e-mailed to me to confirm that I owned that account.

[Tom 1960]

Kevin, I received two emails overnight. One said my password had been been changed and the other was my email had been changed. When I do attempt to log in Facebook it does not recognize my password or my email address. I have gone on to their help page to file a report and it asks for my password and doesn't recognize it. One of the options suggested is that I provide a photo ID. Would you do something like that? Do you feel comfortable doing that? Right now, I haven't. I guess one thing I could ask since we are friends is access my account by clicking on my screen name and see what shows up if anything.

Edited March 13, 2024 by Tom 1960

[Kevin Bresnahan]

BTW - nothing has been posted to your account since yesterday, so if this person did this for nefarious reasons, they haven't done it yet.

[Tom 1960]

Just now, Kevin Bresnahan said:

BTW - nothing has been posted to your account since yesterday, so if this person did this for nefarious reasons, they haven't done it yet.

Thanks. I've been playing with this for the past hour or so. Probably will check in later.  Also IM on Facebook is no longer good. F***!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I know someone who had to supply Facebook with their photo ID for similar reasons and I think it's safe for you to do this as long as it's truly a Facebook support page. You said you went to Facebook directly and clicked Support? That should be OK. Don't follow any links in any e-mails.

18 minutes ago, Tom 1960 said:

Kevin, I received two emails overnight. One said my password had been been changed and the other was my email had been changed. When I do attempt to log in Facebook it does not recognize my password or my email address. I have gone on to their help page to file a report and it asks for my password and doesn't recognize it. One of the options suggested is that I provide a photo ID. Would you do something like that? Do you feel comfortable doing that? Right now, I haven't. I guess one thing I could ask since we are friends is access my account by clicking on my screen name and see what shows up if anything.

This doesn't make sense to me. As I said, I've changed my password recently and I had to enter a code that was e-mailed to me before I could change it. I don't see how this hacker bypassed that feature. Maybe I turned on some sort of added protection at one point?

[Dan Gould]

I thought I had been hacked last week when in fact I was only 'spoofed' - one friend accepted a friend request from the faker until I told her what had happened. Mostly I posted on my timeline about ignoring friend requests or DMs from the faker and got a bunch of people offering "recovery" services.  Banned and Reported.

 

I do have two-stage authentication and it was working weird last week but ultimately no issues resetting a password.  Wondering if Tom had two-stage set up or not?  I am not sure how FB works, but if you think of it, getting in on a hacked password and then changing the email would be first step to successfully changing the password, if email confirmation and code goes there. Tom did the emails come in that order? Changed email, then changed password?

[John L]

The notifications that you received about a change in password and email should have had a click option of something like "that wasn't me."   If you click on that, you will be given an option to restore your account. 

[mjzee]

2 hours ago, Tom 1960 said:

They are asking for an alternative email but currently I have only one.

You should definitely have at least a second email account, if only to direct spam emails you receive after an online purchase.  Just create a free account at Yahoo, Google, etc.

[Brad]

As mjzee mentioned you should have two emails. With many sites, your alternative one acts as your recovery email. 

[Tom 1960]

A lesson learned, I will set up an alternative email account in case this happens in the future. A two-stage Authentication will also be in order. I won't go into details as to how I got myself back online but things are back to normal. I did receive notifications supposedly from Facebook that my password was changed then a follow-up email saying my email address was changed. To play it safe I didn't click on the link, instead I just typed in facebook.com and went about it that way. Aggravating as it was I'm back online. Thanks for the helpful advice everyone.