17/03/2025
Last September a client of mine had their Facebook account hacked. The hacker could see the email address used by the business owner, and was able to guess their password, which, unfortunately, was also used for their email account and other accounts. The lesson here is to use a ‘strong’ password (or passphrase) and enable two factor authentication (2FA) on sensitive accounts.
The hacker(s) removed admin access for the business owner who had set up the Facebook Business page and myself. They then made some transactions using the attached credit card.
When my client raised the issue with META, their advice was to ‘set up a new Facebook business page’. Obviously this is not an ideal solution. Not only would my client lose 10 years of Facebook posts and comments and need to ask all their followers to follow their new Facebook Business Page, the hacker would be able to user their access to the old page to create posts about ‘special offers’ which my client would then have to deal with. They would also be able to post on other sites as the Business Owner, creating damage to my client’s business reputation. They could even sell access to this page to other parties that could create online havoc for my client.
We opened a support ticket with META. META have been ‘conducting a thorough investigation’ for the past six months. They have just closed the investigation for a SECOND time saying saying “our internal team has confirmed that there is no substantial evidence indicating a compromise of your account”. We were then advised that we could go to the META business support page and open a new ticket. If we quoted the reference of the old ticket META would “be happy to continue the investigation”.
I have followed the link that META included. This takes me to to a page where I can query any issues where META have blocked advertisements. I can't place any advertisements for my client as the hacker is the only person with access to the Facebook Business Page so there are no issues to query here.
I can't open a chat with META customer support to raise a new issue.
I have tried to get Meta ‘Customer Support’ to answer the following questions:
1. Why would a Vietnamese person, presumably located in Vietnam, be the sole admin for a Facebook Business Page for a business based in Lower Hutt, New Zealand?
2. Why is the owner of the business (as verified in the documentation that we supplied) a New Zealand resident located at this address that the page in question clearly references, unable to administer this page?
3. Why would our person in Vietnam post on the page “Who manages this profile? I will transfer this personal page rights to want to do.”?
How does any of the above clearly show that the page was NOT been hacked (six months ago), or that something suspicious has happened? Why are these points not ’substantial evidence’?
The biggest question of all that I have is why does META feel that they can treat their customers like sh*t?
