If you are worried because of your hacked Facebook account, we feel you. Still, you should not despair. There are ways to recover it, and we will show you how to do it.
How to know if your account was hacked?
To take the necessary steps, you should first know that someone else accessed your account. For this, you need to recognize the signs, so here they are.
Any change in your profile details, that you did not make, is a sign. For instance, you might discover that you have a different profile picture. Or, in worst cases, that your email address, username, or password has been changed. If you come to discover this, it means you do not have access anymore.
Of course, you would wonder how this happened. Well, there are different tricks that hackers use to do this. They might use phishing, keylogging, session hijacking, and attacks via cell phones, or USB devices.
How do these attacks work?
There are several cyber attacks that hackers can implement to access your Facebook account. At the same time, most of the attacks lead to the same result. After hackers steal your Facebook account, you will no longer have access to it yourself. The most popular hacking methods are the following:
1. Phishing: Hackers send emails, trying to gain the victim’s trust and obtain sensitive data. Or, they build false login pages, to harvest this data.
2. Keylogging is a method of using a piece of software to record users’ keystrokes. Then, they get access to your logins. You can see here how to protect yourself from these.
3. Session hijacking is the hackers’ way of accessing cookies containing sensitive data. They permanently monitor the connection between the user and the server.
4. Cell phone attacks: Attackers can hack mobile phones and access the login credentials for your accounts, including the Facebook one.
5. Attacks via portable media devices. Remember that malware can reach your computer by using infected USB sticks. The software that hides there can extract passwords stored on your computer or in the browser
How to recover a hacked Facebook account?
Usually, if you suspect you are dealing with a hacked Facebook account, you should change all your passwords. This is especially necessary if you use the same password for different accounts. Although, you should know that this is a big security issue.
If you discover any of the signs mentioned above, it is time to take action. But what should you do, when everything seems hopeless?
- If you can still access your Facebook account, you should be happy. Change your password, and even your main email address, right away. For this, from your Facebook account, you should go to General > Contact. Any unrecognized email addresses and phone numbers should be removed.
- If you cannot remember your password or your email account was hacked, use the “Forgot your password” option, on the login page. It would be also useful if you stored “trusted contacts,” as this allows you to send them a security code. Then, using the code, you can access your account and change the associated email address.
If none of the above works, you should contact Facebook directly, using their support page for reporting security issues linked to accounts.
Now, that you know what to do in case you encounter a hacked Facebook account, things do not seem as scary as they used to, right?
