Scam Alert - Hacked Facebook Accounts And Pages

 LABELLE, FL. -- Fake Facebook accounts are common, with over 1,000,000 Facebook accounts  hacked each year, tricking people into wasting time answering friend requests or posting on a totally fake Facebook page. The clues are the fake pages only have a few or no posts, a few photos and a duplication of the victim's photos, usually poorer quality from the original.

You can check to see if anyone is making a fake page by searching for your name or a friend's name on Facebook and see if duplicate pictures and names show up on another Facebook account.

To report a fake account, click on the three dots ... below the top picture and report impersonation or an account that does not belong to that name. Facebook will remove that page within minutes of it being reported fake.

Hacked Facebook Accounts

Far worse are the hackers who get into your account and change both your password and your email address. Now it's impossible to get to your page or any Facebook page, since you are no longer registered at all and they will have no email or password for you, both deleted by the hacker. 

And Facebook's instructions on what to do if you are hacked lead in an infinite loop. Asked for are your email addresses and phone numbers which the hacker has removed from Facebook.

How To Retrieve Your hacked Facebook account.

Go to Facebook.com and instead of logging in like you usually would do, click on "forgot password?" Then instead of entering a password (WHICH WILL NO LONGER WORK), click on "Try another way"

Then, it will ask to reset your password, but that won't work, as you no longer have a working password and the email verification will send to the hacker's email. So, click on "No longer have access to these?" which will lead to a page to start a process to verify who you are. 

Click "Start". This will lead through some steps leading to your computer camera taking a picture of your Driver's License or Passport. 

Be careful to take good picture; easily readable, in focus, no reflections, and showing the full ID. This is not easy to get right the first time, but it allows you to try again. (It took several tries for me) 

Once you send the info and picture back to Facebook, an email will notify you they will check it out and get back to you in 48 hours. ( I got a message back in less than 30 minutes, reset the password and all it good to go.)

So, good luck, that it works out to get you back to your page!