![]() ![]() You click on the link, it looks like Facebook, but suddenly you’re being asked to log in again. You may get a Messenger message from a friend on Facebook, saying something like “OMG did you see who died?” with a link. The most common way that a Facebook account is compromised is by tricking you into giving the hackers your password. It’s bad enough to lose access to your social accounts, but your email is the holy grail for hackers, so rotating that password regularly (every 1-3 months) and changing it whenever something strange happens is a very good idea. That means that even if your password was somehow stolen, they can’t log in without also having access to your phone or your authenticator app.Īnd finally, whenever something weird happens to your security and/or social media, change your email password. Ideally, use a password manager to ensure that you can keep track of all your different passwords, and use higher-quality passwords in general. Don’t re-use your password from somewhere else. It should be a secure password (with letters, numbers and special characters). If there’s anything there that isn’t yours, remove it.Ĭhange your password one more time, now that you know hackers (in theory) don’t have access to your account anymore. In your general settings, check the e-mail addresses Facebook has listed for you. ![]() Same as above if there’s something you don’t recognize, hit “remove”. This will log you out and will help you further secure your account.Ĭheck that you recognize all apps and websites that have access to your Facebook account. If you don’t recognize a location or a device, press the three-dot menu, and select “not you?”. Go to your security settings, and see if you recognize everywhere you are logged in. ![]() Report the weird behavior to Facebook, so they can help stop it happening to others. If that doesn’t work, it’s possible that someone has changed the email address on the account. If you can’t log in, request a password reset. If you can still log in, you’re in luck here’s what to do:Ĭhange your password right away - that’s your first step, if you still have the power to do so. Perhaps someone is sending messages on your behalf, posting as you or doing something else weird. Your account being “hacked” can take many shapes. That’s bad for Facebook in particular, because people often use Facebook to log into other things - so if someone gets into your Facebook account, they have access to a bunch of other things too. Usually, accounts are “hacked” because someone somehow gets a hold of your password. In its annus horribilis, Facebook has suffered an attack that not only gives anyone considering leaving the social network another reason to jump ship, but that's also irrevocably tarnished the trust between internet denizens and the companies they rely on to keep their online lives private.Īs one cryptography expert put it on Twitter, this was a genuine internet catastrophe.Even technically sophisticated friends are currently getting “hacked” on Facebook - here’s how to avoid it, and how to make sure your hacked account is fully recovered. Should Facebook's rivals be trusted with people's online security too? This week's breach would suggest perhaps not. A vast number of people have trusted Facebook would be able to keep their login information safe, just as they do with Google and other tech providers. Given the keys allowed the hacker to take over any account using a Facebook login, the real number of affected individuals is likely far higher than 50 million. What’s most worrying of all, though, is what the hack has proven: that a company with the resources and power of Facebook can be robbed of keys that allow access to millions of accounts across the web. “It's very technically impressive to pull this off.” According to Shadwell, it would’ve taken significant skill to carry it out. “As for scale, well, there's not really any interaction of the target required, so it's not particularly difficult to automate,” Shadwell added.įacebook hasn’t said just how many accounts were hacked, where victims were based or who was behind the attack. The attackers wouldn’t have found it difficult to spin up the basic premise of that hack into something massive, affecting millions of accounts.
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