My personal Facebook and Instagram accounts have been hacked! I was able to regain access to Instagram the same day and to Facebook two days later. What happened, and how to deal with it?
My Christmas holidays will not be remembered for skiing, mountains, and time spent with family and friends, but for the unpleasant incident with my personal social media accounts.
When I was climbing the next ski lift, my phone started to explode from calls and messages from various friends, relatives, acquaintances, work partners, and caring people! And everyone has one message: "Your account has been hacked!"
And here I am, standing on a mountain, shod in skis, with a phone in my hands, and trying in vain to log into my Facebook account, at the same time answering an endless barrage of calls and messages. But my every attempt is unsuccessful: lousy connection, no SMS message with confirmation of the code comes, the matter does not move.
I spent the next five hours with my phone in hand, sending requests to Facebook technical support, filling out forms with photo documents, calling the bank's support, on whose card the cybercriminals were fooling money on my behalf.
In parallel, I find out that my Instagram account is also grunted. And the same scheme works there: correspondence with all the people from my contacts to transfer money to me allegedly to a bank card.
The situation was complicated because I went on vacation without a computer and could only act on my phone. After three hours, I regained access to my Instagram account, unsubscribed to everyone who received messages on my behalf, made a post and a story that the account was hacked. At the same time, I asked my friends to post on Facebook that my account was hacked and tag it to get at least some coverage.
Conclusions:
1. Watch your cybersecurity hygiene!
This is extremely important in the modern world. Specifically: set up double authentication, use complex passwords and change them. If possible, avoid using free Wi-Fi. It is extremely insecure. Use mobile internet.
2. Don't waste time if a similar situation arises.
Alert the maximum number of people, even calling or direct messages. Ask friends to spread the word.
3. Do not be afraid for your account and reputation. Try to protect your friends from the contact book.
4. Too much now depends on social media and correspondence.
5. If they wrote to you with a request to transfer money, call the person to clarify personally. Or play it safe, for example, ask additional questions, test questions.
Write in another messenger, find out if this message is from him. If you have the slightest doubt, play for time.
6. Thanks to all not indifferent people who warned me personally by phone or message.
7. There are at least four ways to hack a social network account: resetting a password (which probably happened to me), using a keylogger, phishing, and a man-in-the-middle attack if you use free Wi-Fi.
And, of course, I want to apologize to everyone for my negligence regarding cybersecurity! Now I realize that people can suffer from this.