How to Recover from Getting Your Facebook Account Hacked

Anytime I get a notification from a Facebook friend I rarely interact with, I’m a little suspicious. And usually, when I go to check it out, it’s a spammy message telling me how they have found a fantastic opportunity to make money at home. Then my News Feed is loaded with the same message to all of our mutual friends. Sigh.

Cyber-criminals love hacking into someone’s Facebook account. Once they get in there, they post spammy comments on friend’s Walls, or send spammy messages through Inboxes or even Chat. These are usually phishing schemes, with links in the message trying to get you to click on them and give out your personal information – or they may try to get you to download some malicious software into your computer.

It’s more important than ever to not click on anything that seems suspicious, even if it came from one of your friends. If you see some weird things on a friend’s Wall, let them know right away.  Here’s what to do if you are the one who was hacked:

Change your password immediately.

Go to Account>Account Settings>Password>Change Password. Make sure it’s at least six characters in length, unique, complex, including numbers, letters, and symbols.

Clean-Up the Spam

If you see a spammy message posted on your Wall, go to the “x” in the upper right-hand corner of the post and select “Mark as Spam”. It will also delete it for you. Do this as soon as you see a spammy post, so no one else is tempted to click on it. If your account was posting spammy messages, it helps to post a status update telling everyone that you were hacked for a couple reasons. First, it will save others from being tempted to click on one of those links. And secondly, it will save you from getting a million messages from your well-meaning friends informing you of your hacking.

Get rid of Your Applications

The fewer of these hanging around your account the better. In fact, get rid of them all if you can part with them. When you click on an application to download, it asks for permission to access your profile. Do you really want that? If the application is a scam, then you’ve just allowed someone to access to your account. Go to Account Settings>Privacy Settings>Apps and Websites>Edit Settings. If you can’t bear to part with your farm, you can go through each app and remove only the ones you don’t want.

Follow the Comprehensive Protocol to Protect your Computer

Make sure your firewall is on. Install, use, and keep anti-virus software up-to-date. You’ll also want to run a free scan of ChicaPC-Shield™ to be sure you don’t have malware lurking on your computer.

–Angela Skinner Mullen