Joanne Hogue, a US-based PR executive, was working in the UK when she realised her Facebook account had been hacked. The first sign was an email from Facebook alerting her to a login attempt from New Jersey in the US. Seconds later, Hogue’s password was changed. Panicked, she tried to sign in to Facebook, but it was too late, she was locked out.
From there, things only got worse. Hogue requested a password reset email, but it was sent to an address belonging to the hacker. The criminals also changed the phone number associated with her account.
Over the following days, Hogue says she contacted Facebook up to five times a day, via email and the social network’s self-service option for hacked accounts. Finally, after a week, she heard back from the social network. “Facebook said they’d send a password change link to my cell phone – but this did not work because they had the wrong number,” she says.
Another Facebook user, Kris, who did not want to share their real name for fear of being further targeted by hackers, has been locked out of Facebook since the end of August…
