FACEBOOK HACKED AND DISABLED
…..along with my Handxmade Facebook page.
With my personal AND business Instagram account linked as well, they are all disabled too.
Honestly I am losing hope, but I still want to try as much as I can to recover my account before they delete it. I’ve created @handxmadeofficial on Instagram as a placeholder account while I wait, and if all else fail, will use it as my new account. UPDATE: I got my account back! @handxmadeofficial will be archived.
This post will serve as a timeline and I will update when there are any…updates.
14th June 2021
My personal Facebook account was disabled without warning. I was hacked, and the hacker had posted things against guidelines on my account and got it disabled.
…I don’t know how it could have happened - I did not receive an email about suspicious login, nor did I get notified about multiple password tries etc. My password also looks like this: “hFU5EZUbVh7#PTTaeRG#XkpX” as I use a password generator. I usually am quite careful about such things and usually would switch 2FA on as well. I was under the impression it was on - but I could be wrong.
A friend had screenshot an unauthorised profile photo change from my account and asked if I was hacked on that day as well:
I also could not see the pages that were against the guidelines.
16th June 2021
I was also charged for Facebook ads that I did not authorise. Seems like the hacker actually created scheduled ads with my Paypal that was linked to my Facebook account. I tried Facebook Ads ONCE a long time ago (2018?), and never use it again. But because I did not remove Paypal as mode of payment, it was still considered “authorised”, so the hacker could use it without much issue.
Apparently, Paypal is not helpful when it comes to these things, so what I did was removed Facebook as a recurring payment via Paypal, and lodged an Unauthorised Charge ticket with the link attached to the Paypal receipt.
I was sent an email to secure my account as well (probably a standard procedure to send to people who asked for a FB ad refund), but I couldn't log in at all, let alone secure my account because my account was already disabled. This is the same through any other facebook help articles/channels - because my account is already disabled, I couldn’t do anything to it including fixing the hacked issue.
17th June 2021
I was refunded - which means facebook agrees that I was hacked. But internally nothing was/could be done about my account getting hacked and DISABLED based on hacker’s action.
19th June 2021
I tried to log in to my account just to check, and got this message:
I believe that Facebook misunderstood and thought that I was the one who posted the post/images/pages when it was the hacker who did it.
At this point, I’ve already sought help through a current facebook employee (friend of friend etc), to see if anything could be done with my account - even if they mentioned they’ve already “reviewed this decision and it cannot be reversed” which is HORRIFYING 😔
I understood that the person (thank you for even helping 😭) does not work in that department and could only “oops” my account, but I can do nothing and just be patient and hope for the best, waiting for updates.
26th June 2021
A week later, I received multiple messages from friends about my Handxmade Facebook Page.
Turns out, hacker had probably removed me as an admin to my own page, and now using my page to….do whatever is it that they’re doing??? This is honestly disgusting and I think my facebook page is probably gone and I’ll never get it back.
But I still hope I can get my personal Facebook account and especially my @handxmade Instagram page which I spent 6 years building organically…all the memories, all the little milestones… I have all the photos saved separately in my hard disk thankfully, but it’s just…different.
This is the last thing I saw on my Instagram page before it got disabled. (I actually started my blobs washi tape preorder RIGHT BEFORE it was disabled, but thanks to my friends and also friends I made on IG, the preorder is fulfilled and I’ve sent them to be manufactured! 💖 Thank you guys 🥺)
How am I going to get back the same username??? All the Instagram Story highlights…. 😔 Will I even get back 10k followers for that swipe up function again??? 😅
Right now, I am still hopeful that I can get my account back. Apparently, Instagram will delete my account after 30 days from when they took action on my accounts, so I’m really just trying to be patient.
9th July 2021 (I got my accounts back!!!!!)
Well, so far only my personal Facebook account and @handxmade on Instagram, but!!! These two are the more important one to me at the moment 🥺So I’m just very very grateful.
How did I get it back? Honestly….I had almost given up. I even created another Instagram account, and was preparing for the worse. The only thing I could do was wait and hope Facebook would get back to me before the 30 days were up. Btw, I got them by on Day 27th! 😱😱😱😱😱SUPER SCARY EVERYTHING COULD HAVE GOTTEN DELETED!!! 😭
Anyway, I would say that I was really lucky. I had friends of friends who worked in Facebook, that approached me and told me they would help me request a ticket to help me with my accounts internally. I probably had around 4-5 people who were helping me out this way at one point??? Although some of them mentioned that their ticket was still floating after I got my account back etc (when I updated them).
So it’s unfortunately, based on your luck 😔 Even if you have contacts in Facebook, there’s no guarantee it would work! Here are the events that led to me getting my accounts back:
(Click on the photos at the bottom of the photo to see the correspondence.)
Perhaps someone’s ticket that was placed in Facebook worked, and I’m finally getting a response!!! Do note the email that sent it to me - it was kinda shady and I was a little bit worried, but turned out it really is legit! 🤣
Although the emails I received does feel like a canned response and I had to make sure I explained and reiterate each detail properly.
When I woke up the next day, I received this message and immediately tried to log in on both Facebook and Instagram, and IT WORKED!!!! OMFG.
I immediately went to change my password, and added 2FA to my accounts - which btw, WAS ACTUALLY SWITCHED ON. I had the one with my mobile phone 2FA on for both sides so I really have no idea what went wrong there 🤦🏻♀️ I added in the Authentication app for added security anyway. Better be safe than sorry and I really don’t want this to happen again 😕
When I first went in to Facebook, I saw that I had some pages that were restricted. These were pages that I unpublished because I don’t use them anymore. “Xinman” was a page I had to make for school 5-6 years ago, and “Doubleoxm Design” was a crochet page I made 5-6 years as well before Handxmade happened.
It was mentioned that these pages would not be seen by public for…30 days or smth if I remember correctly, but seems like my Facebook comes back in stages because I couldn’t see my feed for awhile as well. 12 hours later, the Page restriction warning also went missing (instead of 30 days).
Now I’m not sure if the hacker did something to these two accounts that disabled my whole account, but….yeah it’s weird. I still have no idea what’s going on lol.
Hacker also apparently added some people as friends??? I have no idea who these two people are, and I promptly unfriended them immediately when I saw it. Wtf lol.
11 July 2021 UPDATE: Just saw these restriction information! So I guess it IS the photo that got my personal facebook disabled - hacker had posted ONE photo multiple times. The photo itself looked like something that I would have personally reported as well 🥴
I also see a lot of notifications from Facebook that obviously I couldn’t see cause I couldn’t log in LOL.
I got my personal account back, and my Instagram, but my Facebook page was gone because hacker removed me as an admin so I don’t have access to that account anymore. So I tried the link they’ve been sending me, and when it didn’t work, I sent them this email.
They sent this to me (honestly lowkey triggered that they use the name the hacker switched to LOL) and I was like wait noooooooooo whyyyyyyyy
I refused to give up and, again, explained the situation one more time.
This was the email that came after, and I was so confused!!!! 🥴
Firstly, the hacker was NOT my employee??????? What is going on hahaha. But again, this felt like a canned message so I just made sure I answered it to the best of my ability.
Again, making sure I repeat the situation!!!!!
I actually received a message saying that “Unfortunately, your response didn't include all of the necessary documentation and information in the required format.” after the first email I sent. I had sent a scanned photo of my Identity Card instead of a PHOTO of it, with my hand holding it and all. So I redid another one which I think worked.
Link of what kind of identity document they support here.
They needed a signed document, so I did this up on Microsoft Word, and put in my signature at the bottom with all the details they needed! Now……shall wait for more details. (Sent this on 10th July 2021) I also printed this out, and signed it physically and sent a photo of that - just in case like my Identity Card, they wanted physical proof.
11th & 12th July 2021
Unfortunately, all I got was these emails. I tried a few different rendition of the documents as mentioned, and added in some more details to proof that the facebook page was mine. But by the end of it, I just…sort of gave up.
I decided that, I’ve already given what I can give, and if they don’t accept it and decided that I’m still not the true owner of the page and some hacker is, there is nothing I can do. I was actually thinking how I should create another facebook page and was feeling bummed about it, thought about just not having it at all altogether just because I was so tired 😅 So I ignored the whole thing for a while.
22nd July 2021
Suddenly and randomly, I received this message from Facebook again! It is a very familiar message, in fact, the same one from 9th July 😅
But I went in, and……I COULD ACCESS MY FACEBOOK PAGE AGAIN!!! OMG 😭
The first thing I did was to immediately add my S.O as another admin. Although wasn’t sure if this was a good idea as….as you can see, my page is still under review or something cause I can’t change my page name! 😭
I could see changes being made by the hacker/the person who “bought” my account from hacker (apparently it’s a thing???), and it’s…such an unpleasant sight ugh.
My S.O managed to find this activity tab, and you can see this guy just adding other people as admin and editors etc. And yes, it took me almost a month to officially get everything back…and it’s not even 100% 😔
It’s currently 27th July 2021, and I still can’t change my Facebook page name 😅 I’ll be happy when I can, and I can finally put this distasteful act by someone else behind me.
26th January 2022
Welp, waiting for Facebook to allow me to change my Facebook page name did not do anything. I gave up on it, and decided to just restart a new page 😅
Not gonna lie, it felt really liberating to just do this and get this whole thing behind me (it was really bothering me and at the back of my head).
Please please make sure this doesn’t happen to you….it’s not fun at all 🥴
What to do if you’re in the same boat
There are tons of people who are having similar issues as me (go to r/facebook for example and most of the posts are just people trying to get help with their account), and I think most of them never did get their account back.
If you are one of them, here are some of the articles I’ve read with emails and links you can try. Getting a response is another issue altogether, but at least you’ve tried.
By now you've probably exhausted all options via Facebook’s help portal. So here are the alternatives:
Email facebook.
Facebook doesn’t list these email addresses on their help portal, but they can still be used.
Here are the email addresses I found on the comments section of this Reddit post:
Copy-paste the email addresses below, and BCC all of them with your situation.
disabled@fb.com, appeals@fb.com, support@fb.com
Only use platformcs@support.facebook.com for financial issues (eg. facebook ads fraudulent charges) and abuse@fb.com for reporting abuse, so I didn’t use these.
Business account? Try this.
There is also a link in degomglobalmarketing.com to recover personal accounts, but I wanted to try going the business account route for my Instagram as that is the account I wanted to recover the most.
You’ll get to this screen where they’ll ask for your business details, which then they will send an email to you for more verification.
Send in your “jail photo”, and your situation (anytime you can, just do it), and…….wait for a response. (I only did it on 26th June 2am SGT, and it’s the weekend right now, so I may need to wait for a bit longer).
Very very last (and potentially risky) resort.
A follower had sent me a screenshot of @shannonkirsten on Instagram, who had apparently got her account back through other means. You can read the whole thing on her Instagram Story Highlights under “BIZ”. But here’s a screenshot of one of them:
This gist is that apparently, you have to give this “Juan” person access to your email account - which that itself feels scammy and scary.
Plus I went to find his Instagram account and sees this:
I don’t know about you but it’s difficult for me to trust someone that claims can get your account back but has a disabled account himself that he can’t take back…………. 🤷🏻♀️
I went to his website anyway and found a few testimonials talking and validating the legitimacy of this person’s service. You can read through them yourself and see if you are willing to trust him. But generally, I don’t really trust testimonials that is controlled by the person trying to sell their service lol. According to one of the articles, “*His IG account is temporarily (purposefully) disabled, but you can reach out to him on his website here.”
Perhaps the way he gets these accounts back are not approved by Facebook or Instagram, and they disabled him on purpose etc. We will never know, and you should be cautious if you’re going to try this method.
DISCLAIMER: I am not endorsing this method, but just sharing what I found. I’ve also sent him a message on Telegram (I got really desperate at one point) on 27th June 2021 which he hasn’t responded to yet even after I got my accounts back on 9th July 2021, and even if he did, I don’t think I would have taken it up cause it’s really quite scary.
UPDATE: He responded on July 20th, which is weeks AFTER I got my personal FB and Instagram back ahahhaha. He sent me a link to a supposedly “support channel”, that has whatsapp.com. I did not click on it just in case lol.
Make sure this doesn’t happen to you.
If you’re here, just looking from an update from me, and you still have your Facebook and Instagram account. DO NOT WAIT, GO SECURE YOUR ACCOUNT NOW. Don’t be like “aiya won’t happen to me one”. Because that’s what I thought too and look where I am right now lol. And as you can see, it’s really a tedious and long arduous journey to get your account back, so please, pleaseeee secure your accounts!
1. Turn on your 2FA.
If you THINK you did, DON’T TRUST YOURSELF, GO AND CHECK NOW. Because I also thought I turned it on BUT PERHAPS I DIDN’T 😩 (Update: I did, but it was mobile phone only, and no authenticator app. So not sure what happened there but I added authenticator app for increased security.)
2. If you’ve tried Facebook Ads or use Facebook Marketplace, but never want to do it again, UNLINK YOUR CARD AND UNAUTHORISE PAYPAL. Close your Facebook Ads account too. Especially for Paypal, they can set up scheduled payments, and you may not get all of your money back.
You can read this horror story on Linkedin of how the scammer wasted hours of her time just trying to get it resolved and get her money back, racking up more than $14,000 in fraudulent charges.
3. Add family/friends as trusted contacts to help you with your Facebook account in case you get hacked.
Not sure if this works, but I guess it’s better than nothing. You can see more information and instructions here.
4. If you have a Facebook business page, and you’re a small business owner with no one else in the company, add any of your family members/trusted friends/significant other as admin - so if you have no control over your account, someone else would (AND NOT THE HACKER)
5. If you have logged in your account somewhere else and forgotten to log out, you can remove your saved logins. Do this as well if you managed to get your hacked account back immediately.
This whole thing has really taken a toll on me, especially when it could have been avoided. I’m counting my blessing and considered myself lucky I had friends of friends who work in FB who could help me put in a ticket, but even then, it still took a really long time to get everything back. I really hope this doesn’t happen to anyone at all, and I hope this gives you some insight on what Facebook does when one gets hacked, and how you can avoid being hacked at all!!
Stay safe and also keep your social media safeeeeee! 😭