If you use Facebook, you’ve likely been hacked. Someone other than Facebook is likely selling your personal information. If a friend or Page you link with has been hacked, you have also been hacked. A hacker can access all linked accounts. This is why Facebook is a hacker’s paradise.
We operated a Page and Group on Facebook (FB) for our non-profit organization under our trade name, Seeker Project 4 Spiritual Exploration, for eleven years. We spent a great deal of time and money building a following of over 41,000. It was all lost on February 17, 2022, when hackers took over the Page, our Group, Meta accounts, and my personal FB page. Facebook has become toxic.
Online Security Risks on Facebook
Everyone knows Facebook is free because you are the commodity. You may not be aware that the data they collect is not confined to your activity on Facebook. In fact, that is only a minor part of the metadata.
Most of the information Facebook collects comes from all the apps you use, browser history, maps, etc. Read the fine print of their user agreement, and you’ll see that if their app is on your device, they have permission to track all of your activity. They don’t sell this data outright because other companies could analyze it and use it to show you “relevant” ads. Instead, they allow advertisers to target specific demographics in Facebook ads.
But what happens when your Facebook account or Page is hacked? If a hacker gains access to one account, they gain access to all the others linked to it. Most people don’t know about this, and I either didn’t until it was too late.
Of course, Facebook acts quickly when a hacker takes over your account, right? Wrong. Online security risks on Facebook do not concern Facebook. Facebook is worried about the visibility of offensive language and imagery. But, customers who have been hacked are invisible. When you can’t reach Facebook to complain, you are a non-issue. Once you are hacked and locked out, you cannot contact Facebook.
A Story About Social Media Hacker Dangers
I awoke on February 17, 2022, to find that FB had sent me a code to log into my account. The code came at 2:30 a.m., so I didn’t see it until 6 a.m. When I tried to log in, the code had already expired. I tried requesting another code, but it said I needed to wait 24 hours to get a new one.
I looked at my email. Meta sent me an email stating two people joined our business account. Shortly after that, they must have accessed my personal account and posted something that triggered Facebook, which unpublished my personal account. This action cut me from our Non-Profit Page, Group, and Meta accounts. After that, I began receiving emails from Meta about all the new businesses we set up in our non-profit account.
The most interesting email came at about 9 a.m. from a Gmail address, not Facebook. The headline said Critical Error on your Account Log In Immediately. It had the page link to what looked like the Facebook login page. An hour after I used it, I went back to compare it side by side with the real Facebook login, and it was identical. The only difference was one letter in the URL. But it disappeared before I could take a screenshot of the hacker portal.
The hackers had the link to my login page and had to click on it every few hours. That would keep Facebook from sending me a new link to my phone so that I could log in. So, Facebook is a hacker’s paradise, and they know how to circumvent its security. Since I could not log in, Facebook deactivated my account in March 2022. However, our social media hacker dangers didn’t end with that minor inconvenience.
Social Media Privacy Vulnerabilities
When their one online portal is blocked, there’s no way to contact them by phone. Facebook hides the truth; they don’t want to be contacted by their members. There are only three email addresses for them. I emailed them daily in an effort to connect. Then, after a few days, they rejected my emails.
That same morning in February, I contacted the bank and credit card companies to report the fraud attack. I changed all accounts associated with FB. My credit card company told me that Facebook has what they term a recurring charge. So, even though I changed the account, all charges from the old card would get forwarded anyway, and I would need to dispute each charge.
The credit card company had already received pending charges in less than an hour. I disputed the charges, and they said they would return and flag them as fraud. I assumed Facebook would see this and stop everything. Wrong. The next day, Facebook gave the hackers a line of advertising credit for several thousand dollars a week.
I filed claims with the FTC and the FBI cyber crimes unit. The FBI said our scenario was a spear-phishing attack. We became a target since we had a sizeable following of over 41,000 members. They wanted access to our users. Most users don’t understand the extent of social media hacker dangers that can lead to identity theft.
In April 2022, I created a new personal user account to communicate. When I contacted FB to tell them what happened, the only response I got was the Meta account was suspended for suspected fraud. I tried each of the various departments for pages, etc. Nothing except that the Page was still active.
I started getting emails from Facebook about how well my new businesses are doing. However, I thought cryptocurrencies and gambling weren’t permitted, but somehow, the hackers could do it. Hey, we’re even selling health products now. Then, the emails started coming in about how these companies were ripping people off. We had become the complaint department for the hackers. They were using our corporate and trade names to defraud people.
Social Media Hacker Dangers on Facebook
You’d expect a company focused on cultivating healthy relationships with its customers. Nope. It exists to exploit and sell your personal information and buying habits.
I knew they were getting something for providing the free networking service, but did not know to what extent their application spied on me. Even if the mobile application isn’t open, it tracks your activity sold to whoever wants it.
Ever wonder why you searched for something on Google and then looked at your Facebook app only to find advertisements related to your search on Google? Facebook is tracking your activity and selling it to the highest bidder. If your friend on Facebook was hacked, so were you.
Read their user agreement; I dare you. Even corporate contract attorneys are astonished by the terms of this agreement. It gives them the rights to everything about you: all the data associated with you, your name, and, if you have a business, your business name, too. You give up the right to hold Facebook accountable for any misuse of the data they get from you or about the data otherwise gained from the application on your devices.
It’s Why Facebook is a Hacker’s Paradise
In speaking with legal and law enforcement authorities, I discovered that Facebook’s user agreement is ironclad. You lose all rights to your data and name even if you have a registered corporation and trade name. So, they can do with it as they or the hackers see fit. They say Facebook has become toxic, infiltrated by con artists and hackers.
Suppose you want to sue Facebook for allowing hackers to market their products using your company assets, trade name, and business name. Facebook uses hackers’ activities to its advantage.
Facebook is a hacker’s paradise. Evidently, you can purchase software scripts on the dark web for less than $100 that allow hackers to mimic your browser activity and log in to Facebook or Meta accounts. FB could correct the holes in its systems to safeguard its customers’ information.
Two-factor authentication is standard now for most companies, and they use email or text to a known phone number to confirm approval of authority to access sensitive financial accounts. No other modern company would allow such holes in their systems. Facebook doesn’t seem interested in employing these security measures.
They have companies for their various add-on programs, functions, and games supplied by vendors, which creates more holes in their system. These applications and functions are candy used to entice people to sign up, unaware they are the commodity.
Facebook can use hackers’ activity to inflate its advertising reach and raise the cost of its advertising. They know the hackers will not pay, but it doesn’t matter; it’s a bad debt write-off, which they used to increase the profits from legitimate advertisers. So, they will not fix the holes in their systems; they like hackers.
Within 24 hours of the hackers taking control, they got a line of credit approved for $5,000.00 worth of advertising per month. FB shut down the hacker’s activity in June 2022, five months after the initial breach.
It is no wonder that law enforcement officials say Facebook has become toxic. Facebook profits nicely from the hacker’s activities because they increase the use of their advertising reach and can charge more for advertising. When they finally cut off the credit account, they get cash from the collection company. FB has a nice write-off of bad debt to protect its earnings. The hackers win. They get free advertising and collect the data to sell as well.
I contacted legal help, who told me we’d likely never hear directly from Facebook. Instead, they will sell the unpaid advertising to a collection company for 10 or 15 cents on the dollar. The collection company will most likely file charges in California. So, I can go to court to fight it, but it will cost me several thousand dollars to retain an attorney.
It is disturbing that these cases are hard to fight because they will require my electronic signature approval on the line of credit. So, it will appear as if I opened these new ventures, authorized the advertising, and then tried to use the hacker ploy to avoid paying for this absurd advertising.
As our lawyer predicted, a collection agency contacted us, and the case settled outside of court. We paid more to settle than we ever gained from advertising on FB.
The only people who lose are the consumer, our followers, and the non-profit. Facebook is a hacker’s paradise. Law enforcement told us to brace for other repercussions, such as complaints to the Better Business Bureau. Google could ban our company for promoting spam.
An Apology to Our Past Facebook Followers
Like many, we used Facebook as our primary social outreach for our non-profit. We apologize to our members who are being mined by the hackers who took over our Facebook Page and Group. All we get now are contacts from other hackers on FB pretending to get us access back to our Page, for a fee, upfront, of course.
Just so you understand, if you are a follower and have the Facebook app on your mobile device, your surfing habits are being tracked, whether the app is open or not. Facebook and other third parties track your travel and buying habits. Facebook’s social media privacy vulnerabilities are built into its system. They use the app to gather data, not protect it.
We apologize to all of our Facebook fans, who probably wonder why they are getting all these crazy ads and texts about weight loss, cryptocurrencies, and gambling sites. We’ll update this article if or when we get contacted by Facebook. For now, beware of the social media hacker dangers of downloading the Facebook app.