You see a Facebook page with your name and your picture, that you did not create! You feel violated. What can you do? Well let’s take a look at this annoyance and see!
First of all, there actually two possibilities here. Someone cloned your Facebook page, that is, they made a phony duplicate using your picture. Or you were actually hacked, meaning that someone managed to gain control of your Facebook account. Two very different scenarios.
CLONED
The last time my Facebook page was cloned (yes it happened to me, twice that I know of), I kind of took it as a complement. Someone thought I was important enough to imitate. But there is some danger. They did it because I had a lot of friends. If they can convince people to make friends with the fake page, then they can post whatever they want and it would end up on many other people’s newsfeeds.
I tried contacting Facebook and got no help. They told me that it was not a violation of their policies. After all, I may not be the only Steve Bellinger out there, or maybe I want to make another page myself. All you can do is warn your friends that there is a bogus page out there and not to accept friend requests from you (since you’re already friends). Check the phony site and see if anyone you know has friended it. If so, have them go back and unfriend it. If no one connects to it, the fake site will just sit there, completely harmless.
Now, every time I get a friend request from someone I am already friends with, I just delete it. If I’m not sure, I’ll go to the search box in the upper left and search for them. If we are already friends it will say so.
If I am still not sure, I’ll click on the person’s name in the friend request (don’t click Confirm).
This will take you to the actual page. If there is no banner image, no details or anything, its fake. Go back and delete the request.
HACKED
A hack is much more serious. I was visiting Facebook page of relative. There was a very offensive post that appeared to have been put there from someone I knew very well. I reported it to Facebook, who took it down quickly and notified him. Of course I knew he did not do that. Someone had hacked his account and was posting stuff without his knowledge.
How did this happen? They figured out his password. I told him to change his password immediately. Facebook will ask if he wants to log out everywhere, and I told him that he should, otherwise the hacker may still have access.
I suggested that he also change the password on the email account that is attached to his Facebook account. Think about it. If you want to change you password, Facebook will send you a code to that email address. If the hacker has access to your email, he could change your Facebook password and the email address attached to it and lock you out permanently.
How do you prevent getting hacked? Use strong passwords that cannot be easily guessed. Don’t use the same password for Facebook and your email account. Change your passwords every few months. If you have trouble keeping up with all those passwords, use a password vault program or one of the suggestions you see below this article.
Better safe than sorry.
Click one of the Social buttons to share this with others.
Note: If you purchase something after clicking on one of these links, I’ll probably earn a few bucks from it.
