Hackers are active everywhere and Facebook Fan pages are no exception. Facebook fan page hacking incident is commonplace nowadays. Whenever, your Fan page grows big and it catches attention it becomes vulnerable to hacking. It became the topic of discussion when Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook timeline seems to have been hacked, with the hacker posting a message calling on the company to transform into a “social business.”
The message, seemingly posted on Facebook from Mark Zuckerberg’s account, was promptly removed but it certainly was noticed by people as it received more than 1,800 “likes” and hundreds of comments during short time.
Another prominent incident happened just few days back when Khalil Shreateh, an IT graduate fromPalestine, discovered a vulnerabilitythat allows an attacker to post on someone’s timeline, even if they were not Facebook ‘friends’ with that person. To demonstrate this he has posted the following on Mark Zuckerberg’s timeline
Having said the above, it is important to note that Facebook doesn’t accept the fact that Fanpages are possible to be hacked and according to them it is rather the Fanpage holder’s account that gets compromised. This observation is mostly right and Fanpage Managers should be serious about protecting their accounts proactively.
My Facebook fan page is hacked
Unfortunately, it is only when the Fanpages are hacked people started searching about the proactive and reactive measures related to the same. In your first you get numerous messages posted like this:
” Day before yesterday, someone hacked into the administrator account and made themselves admin for both the pages and deleted all the other admins. One of the page is now up but under the hacker’s admin. I have filed complaint with facebook but unable to get any help. Could you please point me as to how I can retrieve my page? ………”
Formal replies from Facebook are rare. When you indeed get a reply it directs you to this page which in turn asks you to take preventive actions against hacking or facilitates reporting procedure on hacking. Therefore, in most of the cases you find yourself looping around endlessly. Facebook does help you once in a while but it is always better that you equip yourself against such incidents.
Hack your Fanpage in order to prevent it from hacking is the golden rule. You have to see the total scenario from hacker’s point of view. Let us discuss them one by one:
Scenario#1
The Fan page Manager is bit impatient, he wants the fan page to grow quicker. There came an avenue in front of him which lures him to take certain actions. In most of the cases it is lure from somebody to get thousand of likes overnight or strong avenues to monetize the page if he is made Admin of the page. First, we should ask ourselves that why somebody will be so generous towards us? There is no free lunch and there must be hidden motive of that person behind this. In most of the cases this new admin removes all other admin and becomes the sole owner of the page
Scenario#2
It is not easy for somebody to hack your account. Specially that, Facebook nowadays send you sms messages and appraise you about the account login and other activities. If you are in doubt, you can kill all the current sessions of Facebook (Local or remote). It is imperative that your mobile phone has become an important part of Facebook Security. Inversely, if somebody catch hold of your mobile or if you give your mobile to somebody for temporary usage it may be possible for that person to get your password reset and take control of your account/ fanpage
Scenario#3
In case you leave your computer open logging into your facebook account it is easy for anybody to go into your account and take control of your page. Normally, you would not do so but indirectly it is possible. When you access your Facebook account through the public computers there may be keyloggers installed in the computer. This small piece of software simply logs the name of the login page and username and password. Therefore, be cautious about accessing your FB account through a public computer
Scenario#4
One of the most common type of hacking is to identify your email and design an attack. It’s most lethal and effective. You are sent an email posing as if the mail has come from verified source like Facebook or Twitter and you are taken in the login page in some context or other. This login page is actually a pseudo login page and look alike of Facebook login (this is commonly known as phishing website). When you enter your username and password for login either nothing happens or you are taken into original login page. On the background the attacker gets your login name and password for hacking. It’s very difficult to envisage these types of attacks and you have to be really careful not to use login from mail or any other third party links
Senario#5
Sometimes you get some offer to merge smaller pages with your page so that you can increase likes of your page after merging. This can even be in the pretext of showing you or experimenting with Facebook page merging. There is a major vulnerability exists in Facebook that while you merge the pages it merges and preserves the existing admins and their check-ins. The end result is that, if you are not careful, you will end up having Admin from other small pages as the admin of your merged big page. Soon, you will see your credentials getting removed from your own page and the admin from small page which you have merged will remove you from page manager.
Senario#6
There are many impostures who pose themselves as one of the employee of Facebook and will ask you to give manager rights of your page to them so that they can give you free bulk likes. At times, you also meet strangers online who after being a Content Creator of your page requests you to make them managers, Do not trust unknown people. When you will make them manager they will remove you from admin and take your age back.
Senario#7
Many small and big business and community pages are hacked by using phishing links and then role of page managers are changed to content creators. For getting back your right, the hackers asks for hefty money. People who pay get back their pages back and people who are unable to pay does not have any option but to lose their page.
The above are more or less the exhaustive means by which your fan page may get hacked. Of course, there may be combination of such attacks if you are owner of a big Fanpage.
How to get your hacked facebook fan page back?
This blog doesn’t deal explicitly with the recovery aspect. May be we will be covering that in our next blog. In the meantime, if you really need help / advice regarding getting the fanpage back you may follow this page https://www.facebook.com/FanPageHackd. There you might get help about step by step procedure you should follow.
Lastly, but not the least we would like you to remind about the old saying that “Prevention is the best cure”
How did you like this article? Have you ever faced such scenario? Please give us your feedback so that we can develop a strong community against hacking.
Author: Prakhar Sahay,
http://www.letsplan.in
