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My mom had her Facebook account hacked, stolen, deleted...

She got emails in the middle of the night saying her email address was changed and now she hasn't been able to access it.

Does anyone know if there is anything we can do? It's like her account doesn't exist anymore. When she tries recovering it, it will only send the code to the address they changed it to. She did the Trusted Contacts thing and got the three of them to do it, then she got a code to send, and that also didn't work. That was the last option we could find. On Messenger her old messages just say Facebook User, and it won't let me send anything to it.

It's so ridiculous that they don't have any support people to contact. I would think if we could reach someone, they could see it and reverse everything this asshole did. The other night, she was trying everything she could, calling all these numbers, and ended up on the line with someone in India. Gave away her name, birthday, and address before she realized she was just giving info to another scammer. 🤦‍♂️
 
The other night, she was trying everything she could, calling all these numbers, and ended up on the line with someone in India. Gave away her name, birthday, and address before she realized she was just giving info to another scammer. 🤦‍♂️

vince vaughn laughing GIF


Seriously though that really sucks. Definitely help her change her passwords for her other accounts and everything.
 

MrS

Banned
The other night, she was trying everything she could, calling all these numbers, and ended up on the line with someone in India. Gave away her name, birthday, and address before she realized she was just giving info to another scammer. 🤦‍♂️
So she's a moron, then?
 

Mikey Jr.

Member
The other night, she was trying everything she could, calling all these numbers, and ended up on the line with someone in India. Gave away her name, birthday, and address before she realized she was just giving info to another scammer. 🤦‍♂️

Ok this is hilarious.

Your mom is one step away from giving away her life savings to the Wallet Inspector.

9fb5c27f4c308869bd13800fae98eaf9.jpg
 
Happened to me twice. Once under my real name, and once under a pseudonym. As far as I can tell it was used by people pretending to beautiful women to scam dudes out of money. Also the same thing happened with a dating profile, I think I was on OkCupid. Well I hop on board a plane for a work assignment, and by the time I was in my hotel room it had been taken over by someone pretending to be an Asian prostitute, and this person was making deals for a hundreds of dollars to go to places and have sex with people, and I'm pretty sure there was no actual prostitute involved.


I never got any of those accounts back. The second time it happened on Facebook I didn't care, as I was kind of "over" facebook. The OkCupid one really annoyed me because I was working on that dating profile and poof, up in smoke, and this was right before lockdown.
 
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quickwhips

Member
She got emails in the middle of the night saying her email address was changed and now she hasn't been able to access it.

Does anyone know if there is anything we can do? It's like her account doesn't exist anymore. When she tries recovering it, it will only send the code to the address they changed it to. She did the Trusted Contacts thing and got the three of them to do it, then she got a code to send, and that also didn't work. That was the last option we could find. On Messenger her old messages just say Facebook User, and it won't let me send anything to it.

It's so ridiculous that they don't have any support people to contact. I would think if we could reach someone, they could see it and reverse everything this asshole did. The other night, she was trying everything she could, calling all these numbers, and ended up on the line with someone in India. Gave away her name, birthday, and address before she realized she was just giving info to another scammer. 🤦‍♂️
Sorry this happened to your mother. I bet she uses it to keep in contact with friends that she lost contact with. If you do get it fixed make sure to turn on 2 factor. Without that anything isn't safe...I worry even mfa isn't enough in a few years
 

DESTROYA

Member
Happened to me twice. Once under my real name, and once under a pseudonym. As far as I can tell it was used by people pretending to beautiful women to scam dudes out of money. Also the same thing happened with a dating profile, I think I was on OkCupid. Well I hop on board a plane for a work assignment, and by the time I was in my hotel room it had been taken over by someone pretending to be an Asian prostitute, and this person was making deals for a hundreds of dollars to go to places and have sex with people, and I'm pretty sure there was no actual prostitute involved.


I never got any of those accounts back. The second time it happened on Facebook I didn't care, as I was kind of "over" facebook. The OkCupid one really annoyed me because I was working on that dating profile and poof, up in smoke, and this was right before lockdown.
So your time as a asian prostitute didn’t work out well?
 
Sorry this happened to your mother. I bet she uses it to keep in contact with friends that she lost contact with. If you do get it fixed make sure to turn on 2 factor. Without that anything isn't safe...I worry even mfa isn't enough in a few years

Yeah, 2 factor was in effect too. She got a text with a code for that. So it's like her whole phone is hacked.
 

mango drank

Member
Yeah, 2 factor was in effect too. She got a text with a code for that. So it's like her whole phone is hacked.
Or the hackers spoofed her phone number and routed the verification code to themselves too.

I never use FB anymore, but because of this thread I just logged in and turned on 2FA, using the authenticator app. (I still haven't given FB my ph # in all these years ... though I'm guessing they secretly already know it, because FB)
 
Or the hackers spoofed her phone number and routed the verification code to themselves too.

I never use FB anymore, but because of this thread I just logged in and turned on 2FA, using the authenticator app. (I still haven't given FB my ph # in all these years ... though I'm guessing they secretly already know it, because FB)

Does that mean they get every text to her then? How does that work?

I finally had the idea of contacting Facebook through Twitter, which is so ridiculous but they actually respond to people on there. I found a form that allows you to actually write what happened and theoretically this will be read by a real person, so maybe there's hope?

She's so upset about this. She's been crying for days. Was telling me she was up all night once again trying to get it back, and then once she went to sleep she had nightmares feeling hopelessness. People saying this is a blessing really just don't get it. She had like a thousand friends on there. That's how she stays in contact with old friends.
 

mango drank

Member
Does that mean they get every text to her then? How does that work?
Actually, I guess "spoofing" isn't the right term here, my mistake. But whatever it's called, when hackers intercept phone texts, I think they're usually the ones getting the texts intended for the victim, while the victim gets nothing. So it's weird that your mom got a code for logging in when the hackers got into the account. Maybe they tried logging in, and FB automatically sent a text to your mom w/ a code, but the hackers didn't get that text (because they didn't try intercepting texts in the first place), so later on they ended up finding some other way to get past the 2fa and log in. Or, like you say, the hackers are spying on your mom's phone somehow. I gotta imagine that's pretty unlikely, unless your mom is downloading random shady apps and got herself infected.

Also, this news about an FB hack dump just came out, maybe your mom is among the victims, which is how the hackers got her info in the first place:
 
Why would there be a support line for a free service? Or is there some monthly subscription these days for facebook?

OP, tell your mom to take up knitting.
 

Ionian

Member
Why would there be a support line for a free service? Or is there some monthly subscription these days for facebook?

OP, tell your mom to take up knitting.

Well they make money from having users due to advertising.

Same with Google. Know people that worked for both. That's how these "free" things work. They're not charities and why they are extremely rich.
 
The other night, she was trying everything she could, calling all these numbers, and ended up on the line with someone in India. Gave away her name, birthday, and address before she realized she was just giving info to another scammer. 🤦‍♂️
Help her get some identity theft protection asap.
 
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