Matt’s Facebook Page Was Hacked & May Be Permanently Disabled

As you can imagine, this is incredibly frustrating for a dozen or so reasons. Not the least of which is that through my personal Facebook page I manage about 10 other pages. From my personal DJ business page to all the pages of our Augusta radio stations, my Facebook account allows me access to quite a few important things.. and now, it's gone.

Yesterday morning I was using my Facebook to interact with listeners during the Moose Morning Show like any other day. Then, at about 8 AM, I went to send Cooper a message through my messenger app and poof... it said I wasn't logged in. That's weird, huh?

I then tried to open my Facebook app (had been using it all morning) and it also said that I wasn't logged in. I had my coworker jump on and search for me to see what was going on with my page. When she clicked over to my personal page she found that both my profile and cover photos had been changed to display some kind of apparent Arabic writings against a black background. At that point it was obvious that I had been hacked.

Like many people, I use a two-factor authentication to get into my account. So not only do I have to enter a password when I log into Facebook, but I also have to enter a 6-digit code that a secure app on my phone provides me. I can't believe someone was able to get around all of that.

I quickly went into the tool Facebook provides for such things and was able to change my password almost immediately, but the damage had already been done. Whoever these people/person is had somehow reported several of the pages I manage as being criminal organizations and had even attempted to run Facebook ads on my pages.

It doesn't end here. After changing my password and trying to get back into my page, Facebook told me that I couldn't because I was violating their terms and conditions on age. Yep, whoever this is has changed my age on Facebook to something under 13 years old so that no matter what Facebook won't let me in. Facebook told me that if they can't validate my age within 30 days, my accounts would be permanently deleted.

More than a decade of posts, photos, videos and memories live on my Facebook. And while a lot of that is in fact backed up in other places, there is still so much stuff I'll never be able to get back. All of my wedding clients that I interact with through my business page etc etc...

This really makes me realize just how much dependence we put on social media. It makes me sick. Hopefully I can get this resolved, and soon. I'll keep you all posted.

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