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Facebook Withdrawal

Written By: Jodi on February 2, 2011 5 Comments

I’m dying here, people.  My week started off with a crazy bang and I’m still dealing with the consequences.

You see, my Facebook account got hacked. You’ve maybe heard about these hackers who break into people’s Facebook accounts and pretend to be them, asking other Facebook friends for money. That’s the one I got hit by. They hacked into my account, changed my email address, started talking to my FB friends on chat and telling them that I was in London, had been mugged, and needed them to send money to help me out.  They then unfriended those they talked to so they couldn’t post a warning on my page. They changed my wall to ‘me only’ so nobody could post there. Let’s see…what else did they do?  I don’t remember everything. But basically they made it as hard as possible for me to regain control of my account.

I found out about it because a friend called and told me what was going on. I was still in bed at the time. What a great way to start a Monday, huh?  I spent a whole bunch of time jumping through hoops and verifying I was really me, reverting my account back to my real email address, etc etc. One friend called my in-laws to make sure I was okay. Another messaged me and I got it on my phone.  Ugh. Such a pain.

The kind of funny thing is that I’m NEVER on my Facebook chat.  If it’s ever on, it’s an accident. And I’m pretty sure I’d mention if I had plans to go to London. Especially since I have an extreme fear of flying and just won’t do it at this point. But not everybody would know that…it’s not something I like to brag about or anything.

So I had my account back in my control by noon on Monday.  I changed my passwords on my account, my email account, etc.  I got the friends back that I’m aware of them removing.  Everything was back to normal.

Until Tuesday.  I was happily Facebooking along when suddenly a message popped up saying my account had been disabled due to suspected hacking activity.  No way.  Yes way!  After all I had done to get my account back (using Facebook’s tools to do this, mind you), a day later Facebook finally got on the ball and decided to ‘protect’ me.  That’s really sweet of you Facebook, but you’re kind of a day late and a dollar short here! You’re now protecting me from myself!!  I had it all under control…and now you’ve gone and taken my account away from me.  You would really think that the ‘get my account back’ hoops would somehow log what you’ve done so they could see you already took care of it.

I got an email telling me what to do to get my account back.  I had to give them a bunch of information so they’d know I’d taken the needed steps to secure my account. Which, of course, I had done the day before.  Not surprisingly, I haven’t heard back from them yet. I’ve learned they aren’t very quick on the draw. I’m hoping I’ll hear back from them today and get back on FB before the day is over.  I’ve had plenty of things to share and to comment on and to link to…and I can’t.  I’m snowed into my house – a perfect time to Facebook a LOT – and I’m silenced.  It’s very frustrating.  Also, my crops in Cityville are all withered by now.  So sad.  It’s hard to be a farmer in the computer age, I tell ya!

So, yeah. Make sure your Facebook account has a very secure password (I admit mine wasn’t super hard…because who would want to hack MY account anyway?  Oops.) and is a different password than your associated email account.  And make sure that if you go to London, you don’t get mugged. And then find a way to get on Facebook.  I’m not sure how I’d do that if I was mugged unless they left me my phone…which I can’t do FB chat on…well, anyway. Be careful and don’t send anybody money if they ask you on Facebook.  Make them call you or something, first.  Especially if it’s somebody you haven’t even spoken to in over 10 years. Who doesn’t fly. And never mentioned going to London and was posting from home the previous day.

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5 Responses to “Facebook Withdrawal”

  1. Jodi says on: 3 February 2011 at 9:59 pm

    Thursday afternoon and still no answer back from Facebook. I emailed them again last night begging for a status update. Nothing. I am not a happy camper right now.

  2. tricia sexton says on: 4 February 2011 at 7:36 pm

    holy crap! sorry this has happened! i was thinking you unfriended me. had to go to Murph to get an answer. don’t make me do that again! :) hope you’re online again, soon!

  3. Jodi says on: 4 February 2011 at 9:26 pm

    I’m so sorry, Tricia! It is touching that you cared enough about me to approach that source of information. I hope you washed thoroughly afterwards. ;-)

    This is Day 4. I have no idea what’s going on. I think I answered all their questions correctly. There’s no phone number so you can’t talk to anybody in person to find anything out. When they ignore you…what can you do? I’ll probably log in under David’s name later – I can’t go all weekend without checking in on people! Next week…well, I may have to set up a new FB account and see what friends I can re-locate. I hate to start over and hopefully I’ll still get my real account back, but I’m seriously going CRAZY without it. I can live without it, but I don’t want to! We may wind up being one of those joint “DavidJodi” accounts. I don’t think David wants to do that, though.

  4. tricia says on: 4 February 2011 at 11:12 pm

    i heard about a guy on the radio that was taking FB to court because they somehow blocked him out and he couldn’t get it resolved. need a lawyer? ;)
    hope you get this solved, soon!

  5. Jodi says on: 4 February 2011 at 11:25 pm

    You will see my friend request soon. From everything I was reading online, my chances of getting my account back are very slim. So I’m starting over…still hoping I get the old one back but this will hopefully keep me from running screaming into the street.

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