Posted on 04/30/2021 5:25:17 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Some Facebook pages are under attack.
Users are losing control of their pages and their memories, and some people are losing their money.
"It's very much personal. It's very emotional," Renee Heller said.
Heller can see her Facebook page but can't access anything on it, including thousands of family photos.
"Looking back through photos, I have 15 years that I can't account for," she said.
A few weeks ago, Heller got an email in the middle of the night. The message from Facebook said her account information had been charged.
"My password was changed. My email address was changed. My phone number was changed, which are all the things that you use to recover your account," she said.
Through her main account, Heller also manages the page for her photography business and her husband's home improvement business. While she can still view all the pages, she can't post or edit anything on them.
Heller said she has tried to reach Facebook dozens of times for help but received no response.
"I feel like Facebook and customer service probably shouldn't even be in the same sentence," she said.
How did this happen?
In early April, the information of more than 530 million Facebook users was posted online for free.
This March 29, 2018 file photo shows the Facebook logo on screens at the Nasdaq MarketSite, in New York's Times Square.Facebook data on more than 500 million accounts found online It included phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and in some cases, email addresses.
Facebook says the information was obtained from public records that were available until September 2019.
"My only guess is that they were looking for people who had Facebook Pay linked to their bank account and were hoping to either make purchases through Facebook Pay or get access to their bank account," Heller said.
Shortly after Heller spoke with sister station WGAL, she learned that $250 was somehow removed from her Venmo account and used to make a purchase through Facebook.
After she switched bank accounts, another $350 was removed from her PayPal account. We're still trying to determine how that happened.
Other viewers who have contacted WGAL about hijacked accounts tell us that money was taken from their credit cards or PayPal accounts connected to Facebook.
Heller showed WGAL her Facebook password. While it was fairly complicated, it was old.
"I had the same password for 15 years. Never changed it. Never thought to," she said.
According to Facebook, the information involved in this case pre-dates 2019.
If you think you could be one of the 530 million victims, the best thing to do is change your password immediately.
It's a good idea to change passwords at least every three months. It can be inconvenient, but it's worth it.
You mean thieves, other than Facebook?
Better yet, download all those pictures onto a thumb drive, then delete your account.
>Giggle<
If I had a facebook page. I do belong here of course but never any problems :)
Why do people still use fascistbook?
No facebook
No target
:)
Go ahead. Dig around my Facebook page all you like.
Feel free to go after my Twitter account too.
Not a problem for me since I have NEVER belonged to facebook.
I don’t understand this. I have mine private so no public person could find me if they tried. Doesn’t everybody have this feature now?
if the cyber criminals want a listing of all of my ex-girlfriends from college, they’re welcome to them. that’s about all FB is worth; remembering why you broke up with them 25 years ago.
trust zucker-what’s-his-face. good luck with that.
Chumps. Phishing attempts are just a regular part of online life these days. It’s like knowing not to walk around with a $50 bill hanging out of your pocket.
And probably re-used that password in many other random sites.
Got rid of my FB and Twitter accounts. I use LastPass and generate 14 digit passwords for my login accounts.
This just happened to a friend of mine last week. He was more pissed that FB has no actual ppl to talk to whenever a problem like this occurs, which apparently isn’t that infrequent.
Facebook needs to be sued on behalf of the 530 million victims. Having to $1,000 a piece as starters plus more for their losses should break Facebook.
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