Consumer Alert: Facebook profile spoofing

<p>There's good news for people worried about hackers getting access to their Facebook account.</p>

News 12 Staff

Oct 19, 2018, 10:23 PM

Updated 2,009 days ago

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There's good news for people worried about hackers getting access to their Facebook account.
Anyone on Facebook lately might have seen the posts of people saying they think their account has been hacked, so they’re not accepting any friend requests. They may even warn you that you've been hacked because they received a random friend request from yourself.
The good news is that chances are, nobody has been hacked. The problem, at worst, is something much less serious.
The surest sign you've been hacked is if you try to log in to social media but the password doesn't work and you can't reset it.
In that case, someone else now controls the account, and all that you can do is report it.
Anyone who still has access to their pages can often spot a hacker at work by going to settings and view all devices that are logged on. If one of the devices isn't yours, then log it out and change your password.
When hackers have control over an account, the one thing they don't need to do is send out friend requests to people you're already friends with. Those duplicate friend requests are a sign of spoofing.
Spoofing, also known as cloning, is when someone sets up a fake social media profile using your name. They also copy your profile picture to make it look more real.
The person spoofing the account may try to convince friends to send them money or disclose personal information. The information is still safe, though, since no one has been hacked.
The solution to this issue is to go to the fake page, click on the three dots, and report the profile.
Facebook will usually take it down in a matter of hours.


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