Facebook Clones & Hackers & How You Can Protect YOU

Quite a few issues have come up lately on Facebook so I thought I would bring them to light, explain them a little and advise on what you can do within these situations. I am talking about situations like cloned Facebook accounts, hacked accounts, posting from your page you didn’t do, credit card access and that sort of thing.

Please review these and share them with your friends so we know how we can help each other. Plus feel free to share others you know of and I can update this post in a month or so with more! We HAVE to help each other out from hackers and spam!

Cloned Facebook – Not to be confused with Hacked Accounts

This is one of the more common and biggest things I have come across lately. I have had several friends who have had their Facebook cloned and this isn’t to be confused with being hacked. It is fairly common so don’t think you were specifically targeted for a reason.  When your Facebook profile (typically personal profile) gets cloned, it’s just that, it is duplicated. The person doing the cloning takes your profile and duplicates it.  This is public information so they didn’t hack your account to get that information, it’s public! That means they are using YOUR cover photo and profile photo, copying some of your images, saying they live and work where you are, and then start going to work. When I mean going to work, that is inviting your friends to like them… or is it you? That is the catch, they want your current friends to not think twice and just add them. Then, what they usually do is message them and try to get them to give them money or whatever.

So, what do you do?

1. Check em out – the easiest thing you can do is, when you get a new friend request, check them out. If you thought you already were friends, go and do a little search to see if you and Jane are already friends. If so, this sounds like a clone and I bet that both profiles look the same too, huh?
2. Report them – Go to that cloned account, click on the 3 dots (desktop) and a drop down opens up, click on Report and follow the prompts to report this cloned account to Facebook.
3. Help your friend – I like to screen shot the cloned account and share it on my real friend’s profile and say, hey Jane, your account was cloned. Hopefully the friend will comment this is the case and tell all their friends NOT to accept another friend request from them, it isn’t me!
4. Confront them – I have done this.. gone to the cloned account and said, hey, I have reported you to the real Jane and to Facebook.. so be gone!

Report, Help and Watch – the account will likely disappear pretty quickly… but note, they will pop up cloning someone else so just know who you are friends with. DON’T go by the mere fact that this cloned account (currently unbeknownst to you) and you have mutual friends. That just means that they got fooled too.

A True Hacked Account – Not Cloned

If you are hacked, that usually means that it appears that YOU are posting, but you aren’t the one that is posting to your account. It is likely done to share content that you wouldn’t normally share (read: spam). A restaurant client of mine had a post of shoes for sale (in another language) come up on her page and followed by several comments of “new followers”, also in another language.

So, what do you do?

1. Change your password – If you still have access to your account, change your password. If you don’t, you might have to do that ‘lost password’ attempt and hope they didn’t change your email address too.
2. Review your content – if hacked, likely you had content that was posted, on your behalf, but without your approval or knowledge. You would want to remove this from your page pretty quickly. You might want to screen shot the content should you ever need to review it later, otherwise Delete away!
3. Check your recent likes – if you were hacked and had content posted, it likely came with extra followers who helped to promote the content. Check out your recent likes and block them if you need to. They are crap followers anyways and you don’t want them anyhow and helps to keep them from doing anything new by making it difficult for them to find you.
4. Credit cards – If you have credit cards associated with your personal account – you might want to remove the credit card temporarily, monitor your recent charges and contact your credit card company or bank. Give it some time after your password changed and get back to business.

Credit Card Charges Not Authorized by you on Facebook

Know this, your credit card is attached to a personal profile, not to a business. When businesses run Facebook advertising, the person who does the work will be the one who pays for the ads. For example, that restaurant client I mentioned above, she asked if I ran ads for her.  I can’t run ads for a client under their credit card that they have on their account, even if I have access to their Facebook page. So, I told her what to do about her credit card safety and explained the above, we were able to stop it before it spiraled.

So, what do you do?

Same as above, know that only you have access to your credit card since it is attached to your personal profile. Therefore, changing your personal profile password occasionally isn’t such a bad idea and of course, keep track of your credit card transactions by reconciling your account every month.

Bottom line….

Hopefully these have been help tips to help you protect yourself and your friends from cloning, hacking and charges on your credit card. Should you have any questions, please let me know as I would be happy to help you with these issues or other social media marketing. Otherwise, let me know other issues that you have had in the comments below and again, SHARE with your friends so we can all be protected on social media!

~Kristen

Kristen Day

CEO/Founder of A Visual Business

Kristen is a small business owner and thus dedicated to other small business owners by helping them improve their online presence with search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing and pay per click advertising all of which are necessary 'evils' in the digital marketing sphere but enables small business owners the opportunity to compete with larger companies. When not in the digital arena, you can find her riding her Honda VTX1300 or drinking a margarita.