In yesterday’s blog, we walked you through the things you should consider if you’re aware that your social media accounts have been broken into. There, we provided general actionable advice that you should consider when your accounts on any social media platform are at risk; however, as attacks targeting social media platforms are on the rise, we feel the need to focus on one specific platform – today, we’re walking you through the steps of recovering a hacked Facebook account.
Before recovering any account, there are several things that you should consider:
An answer to these questions will determine the steps you should take next. Here’s how it works:
Once you have answered at least a part of those questions, it’s time to get to work.
The first step in actually recovering the account is to, once again, evaluate your options. Do you still have access to the email that is associated with the account? If so, just reset the password. If not, contact Facebook support and they should be able to help. While your account is being recovered, please check on all other accounts that could’ve used the same password – a breach of them is possible as well.
Once your account is recovered, log in and check on the following:
Finally, scan your computer for malware, spyware, and other malicious stuff – also, check on your browser (check your browser extensions.) If any extension is not a necessity, remove it. During this process anti-malware scanners are incredibly helpful – let them clean your PC, then restart it, check on any kind of suspicious programs that are supposed to run upon the boot of your PC (check the configuration settings of msconfig if you’re using Windows), and once you’re sure your computer is clean, reset the password. The main reason for doing this is to avoid the hacker “comeback” – if anything infected resides on your PC and the breach was a direct result of the infected software, the hacker could still access your Facebook account even after a reset – in that way you would only be solving the “upper part” of the issue without thinking about what’s going on underwater, so to say.
Once your password is reset, two-factor authentication is in place, the people around you are informed of possible malicious activity in the past, and your PC is safe, make sure to familiarize yourself with the security measures surrounding your Facebook account – you can rest assured that Facebook provides stringent security measures that are in place to protect your account no matter what happens. Once that’s done, it’s time to further protect yourself on the web. Using data breach search engines like the one provided by BreachDirectory is usually a great start if you want to protect yourself and your loved ones – the information provided by the data breach search engine will help you identify the following:
The BreachDirectory API on the other hand is helping companies, universities, and individuals assess their exposure in data breaches – by providing an email address, username, IP address, or domain that’s to be checked against the database, companies gain insight into the likelihood of a data breach. The BreachDirectory API is also able to be queried in bulk: BreachDirectory also provides the ability to check a set of accounts for their exposure in a data breach.
Both the BreachDirectory data breach search engine and the BreachDirectory API could be incredibly helpful in preventing a breach of your Facebook account in the future. Did you already use them?
Recovering and securing a Facebook account that has been hacked in the past isn’t the easiest of tasks – however, keeping in mind the professional security team behind Facebook, all you need to do is reset your password, then follow basic security hygiene and know a couple of additional security measures – then you will be good to go! We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, and we’ll see you in the next one – in the mean time, make sure to familiarize yourself with the features offered by the BreachDirectory API to protect your team and loved ones, and until next time!
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