First, let me say I am not a big Facebooker. I have a personal account with 200 or so friends and I sign on at least once every month or two whether I need to or not. Mostly I use my personal Facebook account to manage our business accounts and a few client accounts. As you can see, it isn’t something to which I pay a lot of attention.
So, the other morning I awoke to an email saying someone from a foreign country on a PC… we are all Macintosh computers here… had tried to sign into my account. Not a big deal… we get those warnings every now and then. However, a couple of emails down I had another email from my good friends at Facebook telling me my password had been changed. HUH? I didn’t change my password… I was asleep.
Sure enough… when I tried to sign into my account it would not accept my old password and when I tried to recover the account through my email I found that the email account had been changed. Well, crap! If it had just been my personal Facebook page… sorry FB friends… I would not have cared that much. Remember… once every month or two… I doubt I would have missed it. But, through my personal Facebook page this hacker would have access to our business accounts as well as a few client accounts and, to be honest, I was not sure what else. Now that was upsetting!
As always, my first concern was our clients. While Twila went into our business accounts to remove me as an admin, I emailed our clients to get me off their accounts. As Twila was trying to remove me from one of our business accounts the hacker was in it trying to take it over. She beat him by just a hair but, while we retained control, we could not kick him out. He was in to stay it seemed.
Once we had done all we could to protect our business accounts and our clients’ accounts… this took about two hours of very stressful work… I started researching if there was any way to get my account back. Fat chance.
This hacker was good. Not only had he found a way into my personal Facebook account. Not only had he taken it over and locked me out. He actually pointed my phone number and business email address at Twila’s FB account. Now, this is where it got really confusing… sort of like being in one of those old Star Trek causality loops. Every time I tried to use my cell number or email address to regain access to my account, it pointed me to another Facebook account. So, since Facebook thought those belonged to a different account, it would not let me use either to regain control of my personal account. If I could have gotten in a room with the hacker at this point I’m not sure he would have survived. But I had to also be impressed by that level of skill to retain control of his ill-gotten booty.
Twila and I spent the next several hours in very stressful research and computer work trying to find ways to regain access and control of my account. If you have ever had the need to communicate with Facebook, you will know it can be just a tiny bit frustrating… sort of like trying to get the President on the phone to ask about his tax increase plans. But we tried several options with actually a little luck. I got in far enough to lock the account. No… I couldn’t use it, but neither could the hacker. And, I was able to get him removed from our business account that Twila caught him trying to steal. But then it stalled. I needed it to send me a code to my phone but he had changed the phone number, and I guess every time I hit “Send Code Now” it was sending him a code to his phone. My only slight bit of joy was thinking that every time… and I did it about 50 times… I had Facebook send the code it was popping up on his phone which I hope he was seeing as me sticking my tongue out at him saying “naaaa… naaaa… naaaa… na… naaaaaa… na!”
Finally, I was exhausted from the hassle and stress of trying to get the account back. At least our business accounts and our clients were safe. That was the important thing. I could always set up a new account. So I went for a two-mile walk to calm down and clear my head. However, here’s where the Angel steps in.
Any of you who know my amazing business partner, best friend and wife know that Twila is the sweetest, most patient, loving person on Earth. If you wrong her she will smile and forgive you. However, wrong me… she will very politely reach into your chest, remove your heart, drop it on the ground and stick one of her 6” stiletto heels through it while looking into your eyes. So while I was walking she was still at her keyboard and, of course, she found a Facebook back door into my account.
Facebook… if you dig about a mile deep… has a way for you to send them a federal ID to prove you are you and they will return your account to you. My Angel took a picture of my passport, sent it to Facebook and they said, “Hmmmmm… we will think about it and get back to you.”
Sure enough, a few days after the hacker broke into my Facebook account and stole it, my account was returned to me. The return even included a link to add additional security to my account… which… yes… I did. The moral of the story is, in today’s crazy digital world you can’t have too much security on your accounts. When our bank recently updated their website it began to require a code be sent to my phone every time I signed into our accounts. That really annoyed me. Not now. I’m thrilled with it!
So, as you can see, I’ve now been to Facebook Hell but my wonderful Angel bailed my digital butt out. Happy FB posting!
