Meta Security

There has been a huge rise in recent times in people losing their Facebook accounts, cloned accounts and more. We often get asked by our clients and people we regularly network with if we can help somebody who has been hacked, lost access to their business account or where an account has been cloned.

We can’t help you if your account gets hacked, other than to submit a review request to Meta. We can, however, offer the following advice

Use a secure password. This might sound obvious but using capital letters, lower case and symbols is sensible and do not use the same password anywhere else.

1. 1. Ensure that you have 2 Factor authentication switched on. You can do this by going to your Settings & Privacy and then looking for Security & Login. 
      
      
   2. Never click on any link in a direct message to you, unless you are absolutely sure that you can trust it. Some of my friends share YouTube videos with me but I always ask them to share via WhatsApp rather than through my social media, just in case.
      
      
   3. Meta will never tag you in a post or directly message you. This is important, because you get a notification asking you to verify your details or threatening that you will lose your account if you fail to click on a link, you are likely to be hacked.
      
      
   4. Always report such posts and then remove the notification and block the user.
      
      
   5. If you are cloned, do not post a message on your Facebook wall asking people not to accept a friends request from you. Instead, direct message all your friends. This is because posting such a notice will attract comments from people with links offering to sort out your hacked account – none of these people are going to help you. The links may be dangerous and you have not been hacked – a clone is a duplicate account, not a hack and you can report it to Meta yourself.
      
      
   6. If a friend sends you a friend’s request question it. DM them and ask if they have set a new account, and if not refuse the request and block the user. 
      
      
   7. If you have a business page, ensure you have multiple admins – at least two will ensure that if you are ever locked out of your account, you’ll be able to get back in again.
      
      
   8. Download a copy of your data and don’t use social media as storage for photographs, contact details etc. without a backup. 
      
      
   9. Read Meta’s policies and don’t breech them. If you want to share conspiracy videos or engage in any activity that Meta deem unsuitable, you risk losing your account.
      
      
   10. Use a reputable social media marketing agency that requests Meta access properly through Business Suite. Ensure that you maintain full control of your business pages at all time and never give your personal login details away.