What To Do When Facebook Account Is Hacked

How do you know if your Facebook Account is hacked? You know you are hacked if you see unusual activity in your account. This may mean posts that you never made, messages you did not send and stuff like that. In some cases, you may not be able to log into your account.

Facebook Account Is Hacked

Facebook is a service used by many. You connect to your friends and family using the social networking site. What happens when your Facebook Account is hacked? The results can be a disaster. The person who hacked your account can change your profile to anything he or she wants. He or she can upload images and post things that may spoil your reputation. So it is always a good idea to secure your Facebook account

This article tells you what to do when Facebook is hacked and what to do after reclaiming the hacked account.

Reccover Hacked Facebook Account

The first thing to do when you realize your account has been hacked, report your Facebook account is hacked. You will be presented with a dialog box that asks you if you wish to report a hacked account.

This step helps you in regaining control of your account. When you click on My Account Is Compromised, you are taken to a screen where you need to enter your Facebook username (the one reflected by your Facebook URL for example –http://facebook.com/username) or the email ID you use to log into Facebook account. Alternatively, you can enter your name and one of your Facebook friend’s names.

Once you enter the details, Facebook will search for your account and will present you with accounts matching yours. Select your account and enter your current or old password. Remember that if the hacker changed your password, you can still enter the old password to regain access to your account.

Once Facebook recognizes your account, you will be asked to create a new password. Create a new password that is at least eight characters long and contains numbers and special characters. Do not use one that you used earlier on Facebook. You should not use previous Facebook passwords as there are chances that one of your authorized Facebook apps may still be remembering your older Facebook passwords. If that app happens to be the culprit (the app that hacked your Facebook account) you may lose control of Facebook again.

After you create the new password, Facebook will prompt you to change your email password as well. If the password related to your email ID (the one that you use to log into Facebook) is same as that of Facebook, you should change that password as well. If not, simply click on Continue.

Upon clicking Continue, you will get a congratulations screen. The next screen gives you options to turn on additional security features such as receiving an email and/or SMS notification if anyone logs in to your Facebook account from an unknown device. I recommend turning on the notifications for security purposes. This done, you can log into your Facebook Account.

Set Up Login Approval

When you turn on login approval, Facebook sends a code to your phone when someone tries to access it from an unknown device for the first time. For example, if you got a new network and you log into Facebook account (where the IP address is different), you will receive a message saying a code has been sent to your phone that is registered with Facebook. You will be asked to type in the code – displayed in the text message in your phone – before you can gain access to your Facebook Account. This two-step authentication method will further secure your Facebook account. You can activate Login Approvals from Security tab of Account Settings.

Cleanup Facebook Account

Soon after you log into the Facebook account, you need to undo the changes the hacker might have done to your account. To check the activities, go to your profile timeline and see if anything has been posted on your timeline or on your friends’ timeline from your profile.

You may also want to check out the messages folder to see if the hacker sent any messages on your behalf. If the hacker did send messages to people, you should send messages to the same people telling them about the account being compromised and apologizing for the inconvenience the messages might have caused to them.

Cleanup Authorized Apps

One of the most common methods how Facebook account gets hacked is the apps we authorize for using our Facebook account. Go to Account Settings and click on Apps. This will open the view where you can check out all the apps you have authorized for using data from your Facebook account.

If you find any app that you do not recognize, remove it from Facebook by clicking on the X button available towards the right. You may also want to clean up the apps view by removing the apps that you no longer use.