Can I offer remote help on a stolen Facebook account?
January 25, 2021 1:09 PM   Subscribe

Someone has stolen my mother's Facebook account and set it up as an alternative profile. How can I help from a distance.

They have changed the associated e-mail and her attempts to use automated recovery tools she found on Facebook have resulted in her going in circles and getting frustrated. My father has tried to help without success. They are both reasonably technically savvy, but she she is of a generation where if you can't speak to someone on the phone about it, it isn't likely to get fixed (she may be right about that). So, she has sent an e-mail to security@facebookmail.com telling them her account was stolen and asking for someone to call to help her fix it.

I have tried flagging the account in various ways, but Facebook doesn't have any way to report the obvious - that I've linked this account as my mother for a decade, there a numerous images of her on it, and the newly uploaded name and images do not match and are being replied to with multiple loved one's concern that the account is obviously hacked. Multiple times I have gotten responses telling me the new posts/account meet community standards.

Is there anything else I can do remotely, without access to her accounts? She has changed passwords on other accounts, and no evidence of this impacting anything but Facebook. Are there any different recovery tools I could point towards? Should I try to contact everyone the account is linked to and let them know that it is no longer controlled by her and they should remove/block it?
posted by meinvt to Technology (6 answers total)
 
Should I try to contact everyone the account is linked to and let them know that it is no longer controlled by her and they should remove/block it?

It occurs to me that, before you go through the effort of a mass-contact campaign, you may want to exhaust other recovery options first.

I say this because the last resort might be a judgment of Solomon sort of thing where, if she can't recover control of the account, she might want to instead try to get it shut down to prevent impersonation of her. In which case, part of your out-of-band message to all of her Facebook contacts should probably be that they do their own verification the account no longer represents her, and that they report this to Facebook.
posted by XMLicious at 1:30 PM on January 25, 2021


So does she have access to the account at all?
posted by cooker girl at 1:36 PM on January 25, 2021


At any rate, here is a page that could help.
posted by cooker girl at 1:40 PM on January 25, 2021


Response by poster: She does not have access to her account and everything seems to point to facebook.com/hacked. I have heard that they went through several cycles of being told they needed a confirmation code, it was e-mailed to them, they entered it, they were on the same page telling them they needed a confirmation code, etc. After five times through the cycle they concluded that wouldn't work.

The way to help friends that Facebook offers is to tell them to go to facebook.com/hacked.
posted by meinvt at 1:56 PM on January 25, 2021


Maybe if they select "No, I don't have access to the phone number or email address on the account" that will get them to a different step than they've seen before? Even if they do have access, it's worth a shot.
posted by cooker girl at 2:03 PM on January 25, 2021 [1 favorite]


I have heard that they went through several cycles of being told they needed a confirmation code, it was e-mailed to them, they entered it, they were on the same page telling them they needed a confirmation code, etc.

If they are emailable, and receiving those codes, that is a really good sign. It's possible this is just a their-side browser problem and it may be that if they use a different browser and/or clear their facebook cookies and try one more time. I don't know if facebook is like Google but Google also takes into account if you're using the same internet access and/or browser to try to access the account. I know it's really frustrating but I;d do that first and then take cooker girl's step which may involve emailing a copy of government issued ID (like a driver's license or something) to facebook security.
posted by jessamyn at 2:13 PM on January 25, 2021 [2 favorites]


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