How My Facebook Account Of 8 Years Was Hacked And Hijacked, A Cautionary Tale

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Chibuike Egbo/Facebook

This is a cautionary tale of how my Facebook account of 8 years was hacked and hijacked.

So many things goes on in the spiritual realm that we as mortals may not know, at least that's what 'spiritual people' say and we can only imagine until we are opportune to catch a glimpse of what it feels like.

In the same vain, a lot goes on in the internet like cyber crimes and hacking. For most of us who have not seen or been a victim of any of it, we could only imagine and sometimes dismiss the possibility of ever being their victim until we are hit!

That's what my case was, I have been an active Facebook user since 2010, with over thousands of memories in form of posts, pictures and videos.

HOW IT HAPPENED:
The hacker came through my Facebook friend whom I know in person.
I first noticed that I have an active friend whose name were all in Arabic words so I became curious to know who this friend was, a friend I couldn't remember sending or accepting friends request from.

After going through his profile and previous chat I had with that account, I found it was actually someone I knew from 'home', at first I wasn't suspicious of the account because I knew people could be 'Crazy ' to the extent of changing their social network names to whatever that pleases them probably for fun or popularity so I did not border to ask him what was with the Arabic stunt. I just decided to ask him about school because the supposed owner of that profile (whom I knew) is a student.

His reply was very normal like the real owner of the account, He sent me a link pleading with me to Vote for him in a contest he was a participant by following the link. I obliged but when I opened the link I found that the design of the site was like that of Facebook and my log in details (Username and Password) were demanded.

After a while, I decided not to just type in my log in details immediately and ask my friend what the whole voting-contest was all about. I switched back to Facebook and asked him, he told me it was one "Street stuff" he was into and that it meant a lot to him, according yo him, he really needs my vote because he was very passionate about winning.

At that point I gave up asking even though my heart was telling me that something was not just right(but the thought of being hacked was not there at all).
I followed the link again and had my facebook log in details put in after which i did not see any thing like 'vote' or 'contest', rather it displayed something that read "This is an IP..... I can't fully remember, the site actually told me that my log in details has been disclosed to it.(yet it didn't occur to me to even change my password).
I really didn't understand what it meant but I was sure that something was going to happen.

I went back to Facebook and told him I wasn't comfortable with the site and that I fear my security has been compromised. He apologized and said that the link might be the wrong link, that he was going to ask for another from " The link providers ". I resolved I wasn't going to clique on any other link he was going to send unknown to me that the process of hacking my account had already began!

My mind was taken off the issue with replying other messages and comments and for the rest of the night, I did Facebook without noticing anything, the next morning I did Facebook up until noon when I decided to take a Nap. I was still half my sleep when my younger brother called me and was asking why I changed my Facebook name to 'Abdulsalem Mohammed Loni', a name that sounded very strange to me. I quickly stood up from bed and told him I never did, he said to me that "Your account has been hacked". That was when I told him about my encounter the previous night, I hanged up on him to check things out and behold my account has been logged off and displaying a strange name(Abdulsalem Mohammed Loni) with my picture (He later changed the picture).
I tried to gain access with my password but to no avail, I was very tensed and my head was blank for more than 3 minutes.
When I started thinking again, I called my brother back and asked him to send me the phone number of that my Facebook friend through whom the hacker got access to me. I was later told that His(my Facebook friend) account was being run by a hacker for some time, that he has been trying to gain access to the account all to no avail. That was when it became very clear to me that I HAVE BEEN HACKED!

I explored all the means provided by Facebook and others to get back a hacked account but they yielded nothing!
Meanwhile, the hacker was online and busy deleting my personal informations and putting up fake ones that was meant to be his, I watched my account of 8 years being raised down bit by bit!

WHY I COULDN'T RECOVER MY ACCOUNT
After reading this post, there is every possibility that you will blame me for my ordeal well, that is your thought/opinion, you are entitled to it and I respect that. For me I have come to reality with the fact that my account is gone for good, the main purpose of this post is for people to learn from my story and avoid being a victim because every now and then, accounts are been hacked, and if people don't have access to this type of report, more accounts will be lost!

One will argue that people's account have been hacked in the past and they later retrieved their account through one way or the other but not losing it completely, yes its true, let me also add that my friend through whom the hacker got to me later got his account back! Yes, I was the Aaron!
Now, I was unable to recover my account basically because I didn't have an active recovery email on my Facebook account as at the time of the hacking. I had my email on my profile sometime ago until I got fed up with receiving unending notifications right inside my mail inbox, now instead of simply turning off the email notification from my Facebook account settings, I decided to remove it completely. Had it been my email was registered on my Facebook profile as at the time of the hacking, Facebook will automatically send me a mail that my password changed, regardless of who did the changing.

With your email activated on your Facebook profile, what Facebook does when your password changes is to alert you via your recovery email, providing you with a link that allows you undo any changes made on your account if you're not the initiator, once you clique on that link, you will be made to answer questions about your account which they believe that only the real owner of the account will know and after that you will be able to retrieve your account with new log in details and that was exactly how that my Facebook friend, whose account was hacked and got to me, recovered his own.

WARNING/ADVISE
If you are reading this post and you don't have at least one recovery email registered on your profile, please you need to put em up like right now to avoid 'Had I know/story that touches the heart'.
It is very important you have a recovery email on your profile.

Please do not expose your security online by disclosing your log in details to any site you are not sure of its authenticity.
But if for any reason you happen to disclose your log in details, especially password, please do change them immediately.

Lastly, Facebook has introduced a couple of ways to maintain your security online and to get you back to your account incase you are having issues logging in, one of them is sending a unique code to 3-5 of your trusted friends, these codes when assembled together will automatically get you back to your account.

Please go to your security and log in settings to activate it today.

See image below.