Facebook account: hacked or copied? – The most important thing at the beginning:  

To avoid becoming a victim of cloning or hacking on Facebook, there are a few settings you should adjust. Facebook accounts are cloned more often than hacked. Again and again you read about users on Facebook who say that their Facebook account has been hacked. Most of the time it is a clone, i.e. a copy, of your own account.

Intentions behind cloned Facebook accounts

Account cloning is when scammers create a new account that looks like it comes from the victim themselves. In such a case, not only is the cloned user account checked, but the identity of the person concerned is also misused. Content from the victim account is copied and posted to a new Facebook account. However, images and content can only be copied if they are at least partially freely accessible and publicly visible to everyone. So you should pay attention to the privacy settings when posting.

Once such a cloned account is created, friends of the victim are contacted. The aim of such a clone attack is often to defraud the victim's Facebook friends. For example, messages are sent in the victim's name stating that they are abroad and urgently need money to travel home.

There are also cases where attempts are made to get Facebook friends to visit websites with harmful content. Or the victims are blackmailed by publishing illegal content.

Hacking Facebook Accounts

Unlike cloning, when hacking, fraudsters actually gain access to their victims' accounts. Here you don't pretend to be the victim, you actually control the user account. So it can be used for any criminal activity.

In order to hack a Facebook account, the perpetrators need the password. They often get access to these through data breaches or hacks of other websites where the victims use the same password as their Facebook login.

Victims also often get their access data via phishing messages.
To do this, fraudsters use fake messages that are sent to victims via email or SMS. A link contained therein leads to a fake Facebook login page. If you enter your access data here, they can be intercepted and used to access your Facebook account. Also dangerous in this regard are the repeated requests: “Are you the one in this video?”

Accounts are hacked less often than cloned. When such a case goes to court, it is always difficult for victims to claim that the account was hacked. Because it stands to reason that many who post banned content use this very statement as an “excuse”.

How do you protect yourself from having your account cloned?

Since it is important for scammers to contact Facebook friends, the easiest measure here is to hide your friends list.
You can only display these for yourself, or only for friends or specific groups of friends. If fraudsters do not have access to the friends list, cloning is usually not even worth it.

If you discover that your own user account or that of a friend has been cloned, you can and should report this account to Facebook.

How do you protect yourself from having your account hacked?

The most important protection on the Internet is not to use a password twice! A password should also be long enough. 20+ characters is better than the often requested 6 or 8 characters. Special characters are never wrong. The longer the password is, the easier it is to leave it out.

Security and login settings

The online giant itself provides numerous settings for “security and login”. Activating two-step authentication is highly recommended.

Has my Facebook account been hacked?

As long as you can still access your account, you can see a list of devices and locations where you are currently logged in to Facebook under the “Security and Login” settings. Under “show more” you get a complete list and can check whether access has taken place by anyone other than yourself.

If you can no longer access your Facebook account even though you know the correct access data, you should definitely be alarmed. However, hacking is only one possibility why access no longer works.

Facebook itself provides help topics on cloned and hacked accounts.

In line with this topic:

Source: Steiger Legal
Article image: Shutterstock / By hakusanto


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