Your Facebook account helps you connect to the world, meet new people, make new friends and connect with family and friends as well. Apart from the chats and discussions, it’s a great place to share beautiful moments in one’s life.
With all these and more, your Facebook account holds a lot of your personal data and should always stay private. Like every other social media account, increase in the rate of Facebook accounts being hacked is now getting unusual.
Recently, I couldn’t get some sleep because a friend’s Facebook account was hacked and almost used to scam/deceive her family and relatives.
Well, she said she always heard about hacking but haven’t experienced one herself. Since that incident happened, she’s now so security conscious and alert.
Thanks to her persuasion, I am gonna help you recover your Facebook account as fast as possible and also share with you some security tips and tricks to make your Facebook account very safe and secured.
If your Facebook account is still under your care, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read this article. You are expected to have this security knowledge and also share with your friends as well.
Don’t wait until you get hacked before you put your Facebook security as a top priority. Unless your account doesn’t mean anything to you, which I doubt.
Well, my friend actually asked me
“Why would anyone just decide to hack/gain unauthorized access into my Facebook account?”
As much as I needed to answer her as fast as possible and help her recover her Facebook account completely, I wanted to sleep too.
So, these are the few reasons why any human being on this earth would just decide to hack into another person’s account and carry out any action they wish.
- Your Facebook account could be hacked to get sensitive information from your account without your knowledge
- Your Facebook account might be hacked to simply put you in trouble
- Scammers/Fraudsters could hack into someone’s Facebook account to do fraudulent activities
- Your Facebook account might be hacked for fun
- Your Facebook account might still be hacked by mistake because of your security loopholes
- Your Facebook account is really old, trusted and has some potential for illegal activities
- Your Facebook account could be hacked for just any reason
Now that you know why so many Facebook account hacks are trending, you should also know what to do in case you got your account messed up by an unknown person.
What to do if your Facebook account has been hacked
The first thing you would notice of your Facebook account is hacked is that you won’t be able to sign in even with a previous working login details.
So, what should I do if I find out my Facebook account has been hacked?
- Keep calm
Yes, my friend was restless especially with the fact that her name, cover photo and profile picture were all changed to something really different.
I had to calm her down by telling her everything is under control and she should just know that she is gonna get back her account before leaving my house.
So, if you just found out your Facebook account was hacked, just keep calm an read on.
- Don’t try to open a new Facebook account
Before she came, she had already created a fresh Facebook account and started adding her old friends. It was even going to make things more complicated for her and better for the hacker.
Facebook might still allow you to create 10 new accounts, but that doesn’t mean you should just leave your old account and start a new one because it was messed up.
- Recover your hacked Facebook account.
Your boiling question is, how do I recover/gain access into my old Facebook account that has been hacked?
The answer is just below but you have to read carefully and fast too so that more damages would not be done to your account.
If you forget your Facebook account password, this post might also be useful because it involves password recovery/change too.
So, to recover your hacked Facebook account, here are what you need to do immediately.
- Open Facebook on the web or via the Facebook app on your smartphone
- Click on Forgotten Password
- If you are signing in with the same device you usually use, your account might be recognized and then shown to you.
- Tap on Confirm to proceed or select Not my account to manually search for the desired Facebook account
- Type in your email address or phone number in the space provided and click on search
- Once your account is shown, select it.
Note: Your account profile picture and name must have changed to a new one, so watch out carefully.
- You will have the option to verify your password change via your phone number or email on your Facebook account
- Select phone number(recommended) and then Facebook will send a confirmation code to your phone
- You can enter the code manually if the app doesn’t automatically detect the SMS message.
- Once you are done, select the option to Log me out from other devices. This is recommended because your Facebook account will be logged out from every other device apart from the current device you are using.
- Enter your new password and confirm it.
The password strength is actually what most people carelessly ignore and then put their Facebook accounts at risk. To make sure your account is safe, never use your phone number as your Facebook password, no matter how mixed up the numbers are.
Most hacked accounts either use their phone number as passwords or even use their name. Too bad.
Now that you can login into your account, the first thing to do is to put your Facebook account profile back to it’s normal shape(There’s no way the hacker would gain access to your FB account without dirtying the floor.
Well, it’s time to clean up the mess.
- Click on the icon at the top right(3 horizontal lines) to open the options
- Click on your profile picture/name
- Select the camera icon in your profile picture and upload a new photo of your real self. Also do the same for your cover photo
- Click on the options icon again
- Scroll down and select Settings
- Click on Personal Information
Verify if any detail has been changed(Name, Email address and Phone number). If there’s a change, please proceed.
- Click on Name
- Enter your name, and click Review Change.
- Enter your password, and click Save Changes.
- Click on Name
- Under Other names, select Add a nickname, birthname..
- Under name type, you can select Nickname
- Type the name you wish to use in the second field provided. Please, use your real name.
- Make sure you tick Show at top of profile. This is to enable your friends to easily recognize you even though your name has changed completely.
- Click on Save
Now that we have taken care of the name aspect, it’s time to edit your complete profile and then make other amendments as well.
- Click on the top icon like a user avatar and then select Edit Profile
- You now have the options to edit your details, bio and other important information that might have been compromised.
- Most of the important info to edit are under the Details section which includes profile like Work, Education, Current City, Relationship status etc
Now, here’s the final thing to do after recovering your hacked Facebook account.
- Delete all photos, status updates, videos etc that weren’t originally posted by yourself
- Post a status update telling your friends what happened and also apologize for any inconvenience or losses. Don’t forget to tag your best friends and add a feeling too.
- Check your Messenger to see if newer than normal chats have been started by the hacker. In my friend’s case, a lot of messages were sent to her friends requesting for personal information, relationship, bank/card details and even more worse things.
- Start a new chat and explain what happened and what you have done to put things in place.
- You should try as much as possible to stay online and build back the trust.
Don’t go yet, here are some very important Facebook account security tips you should know.
Facebook Account Security Tips
- Never use your phone number, a friend’s phone number or your name as a Facebook password
- Never save your Facebook login details on a public computer
- Never save your Facebook login on a friend’s phone
- Do not send your Facebook login credentials to anyone unless you are ready to loose your precious account anytime soon
- Do not send any Facebook account recovery code to any third party unless it’s someone who’s trying to recover your account for you
- Do not tell anyone your know your main Facebook email or phone number or even your recovery email.
- Do not use the same password you use on other websites as your Facebook password. It makes you more vulnerable to attack.
- Don’t use the same password for both your Facebook account and email. This will make hacking into your account and other profiles very easy.
Add more security to your Facebook account by enabling/setting up these options under Settings > Security and login
- Choose friends to contact if you are locked out
- Check where you are currently logged in and kick out any suspected device/location
- Turn on alerts about unrecognised logins
- Use two-factor authentication to add an extra layer of security to your account. This is very important. If you have the Google Authentication app installed on your device, you can set it up straight away from the Facebook app or select use a different device.
- Save your Recovery codes in case you don’t have your phone with you.
Finally, to help you stay updated with activities on your Facebook account, you should always try to login at least once or twice a day or even more so that you will know when there’s an intruder.
I hope this article was able to help you recover your hacked Facebook account and give you more options to tighten your Facebook account security.
Don’t forget to share, you might save a friend or family from getting hacked.
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Hi, I have gone through the process but no to avail, my phone number and email ID was changed, so am not having access to my account.