The silent struggle of thousands of Facebook users whose accounts have been hacked outside of major breaches rarely makes headlines. Facebook itself doesn't offer much but a wall of silence. Are you sure your account hasn't been compromised?
If you suspect that your Facebook password was leaked or that your account was breached, act fast! Facebook hackers could lock you out of your account and hassle your friends and family. Secure your Facebook account now and get it back before it's too late. We'll show you how.
How to Know Whether Your Facebook Account Was Hacked
So, how do you know if your Facebook account was hacked? If a Facebook hacker manages to get into your account, they will leave a trace.
To check for traces, log into your Facebook account and click the arrowhead in the top right to expand the Account menu. From that menu, pick Settings & privacy > Settings and go to Security and Login.
Related: How to Recover Your Facebook Account When You Can't Log In
At the very top, you'll see a list of devices from which you've most recently logged into your Facebook account and when they were active.
Click See More to expand that list and review older sessions.
Other signs that your account may have been hacked include:
- Your personal data, including your password, email address, phone number, or name were changed by a third party. Within Settings > General, check your full Contact information, i.e. click the respective field to expand it. You can see all phone numbers associated with your account under Settings > Mobile.
- Friend requests and private messages were sent from your account without your doing. Within Settings, go to Your Facebook Information > Access Your Information and look over the various details there.
- Your timeline contains posts you didn't add or permit. To see your timeline, click your profile picture in the top right or, if you can't see it there, click the hamburger menu icon, then you should see your picture in the top left.
If you're using Facebook to log into other applications, like Spotify or Instagram, we strongly recommend changing the respective logins or tightening your Facebook security to secure these third-party accounts.
If you spot any suspicious activity in your logins or have seen one or more of these other signs, you'll find what you need to do below...
What to Do If Your Facebook Account Was Hacked
If you have confirmed that your account has been compromised, here are the steps you should follow...
1a. Change Your Facebook Password
In case your Facebook hacker hasn't changed your password, you got lucky! Immediately update your password before you log out of suspicious sessions (you don't want to alert the hacker). If it's too late, head to step 1b.
Under Settings > Security and Login, scroll down to Login and click Change password. Enter your current password, set a strong new password, and click Save Changes.
Next, you should see a Password Changed confirmation window that lets you Review other devices or Stay logged in. Choose the former and click Continue. In my case, this actually didn't do much, but it's nice to see this reminder.
Log Out of Facebook Sessions
After changing your password, scroll back up to Where You're Logged In. Either Log Out of individual sessions by clicking the three vertical dots or click the Log Out Of All Sessions option in the bottom-right after expanding the list.
Do this only if you're sure you can log back in.
We recommend logging out completely, provided your contact details and security settings are up to date. You don't want to jeopardize your means of logging back in. If you're unsure, manually log out of all recent sessions that seem suspicious.
Secure Your Account
You also have the option to earmark individual sessions as Not You. This will bring up a pop-up showing details of that session.
Click Secure Account if you don't recognize the location, device, and last activity. Click Get Started to trigger an automated step-by-step process of securing your account.
The next screen summarizes the steps of the process. Click Continue.
When you're done, you'll be sent back to your feed. If you still think your account has been compromised, proceed to Step 3.
1b. Reset Your Facebook Password
If the hacker did change your password, and you need to recover your Facebook account, act quickly. Try to regain access. There is a Forgot your password? link underneath the Facebook login:
This will let you retrieve your password in several ways. First, you'll have to Find Your Account. You can either enter the email address you used to register with Facebook or any other secondary email address you added, as well as your phone number.
If Facebook can find your account, you can choose how to Reset Your Password.
If the hacker changed your email address, you should have received a message to the original address. Find this message because it contains a special link that will let you reverse the change and secure your account.
In my case, Facebook offered to send a recovery code to any of the email addresses I added to my account. We highly recommend that you specify multiple backup email addresses. Remember that you must keep those accounts equally secure, at least by using a strong password and ideally by enabling two-factor authentication on your email accounts.
Use the No longer have access to these? link if that's the case. Facebook will ask how they can reach you to verify your identity. This can take a while.
If you believe that the Facebook hacker who has access to your account has been abusing it, proceed to step 2.
2. Report the Facebook Hack
If your account wasn't simply hacked, but is sending out ads and spam to your friends, you must report it as compromised to Facebook using .
You can also use this in case you have lost access to your account by means of a phishing attack. Facebook will help you recover access to your account.
3. Remove Suspicious Applications
Oftentimes, it's not an evil person that randomly hacked your account. You may just have granted access to a malicious Facebook application that subsequently hijacked your account.
To remove suspicious applications, go to Settings > Apps and Websites and go through the list. Click See More to expand the list of Active apps and websites, set a checkmark on apps or websites you'd like to remove, click the Remove button in the top-right, and confirm whether you'd also like to "delete posts, photos or events posted on your timeline" from these sources.
We also recommend removing all Expired apps and websites.
Alternatively, click the View and Edit link and change the app's permissions, which includes options like app visibility, access to your personal information, and actions it can take.
4. Do Damage Control
After doing everything you can to regain control over your hacked Facebook account and preventing further damage, inform your friends and family about what is going on.
This is a precautionary step in case the hacker has used your account to reach out to people. If you presently can't access your account, contact your Facebook friends through other social networks, by email, or have a mutual friend inform them via Facebook.
Improving Facebook's Privacy and Security Settings
Once you're back in control, we highly recommend that you review your Facebook settings.
- Under Settings > General, update your contact details, and add additional email addresses or mobile phone numbers that you have access to. Likewise, remove those you no longer have access to.
- Head to Settings > Security and Login to set up extra security measures, including alerts about unrecognized logins, two-factor authentication, and choose three to five trusted friends who can help you to recover your account should you get locked out.
- Under Settings > Privacy, choose the privacy settings you're comfortable with. We recommend letting only friends see your future posts and retroactively limiting the visibility of past posts.
Also read: How to Secure Your Facebook Account for Recovery
Note that the single most important security feature you can enable on any of your accounts is two-factor authentication. We strongly recommend that you set up two-factor authentication on your social accounts that offer this feature. You can use Microsoft Authenticator and Google Authenticator with Facebook.
How Do You Keep Your Facebook Account Safe?
Once you get hacked, you're forced to learn about all the mistakes you made. And hopefully, you'll never make them again.
This is the time to learn how hackers can attack your privacy and how to protect yourself against them. Hackers never stop evolving, so your knowledge of their tactics needs to keep up.
