Facebook Pages Hacked
Something bad is going on with Facebook.
Just one week ago, on February 8th, an Albanian hacker was given credit for hacking into over 1,000 very popular Facebook pages, many of which have over 100,000 fans. Over the next few days there were more Facebook pages hacked; at which time all existing administrators (those in charge of the fanpages) are removed from the page so that the hackers have complete control over the content and media that is shared on the page. Some of the affected pages contain new profile pictures with the words ‘Hacked by Omega’ and ‘Don’t afraid! You are hacked.’
One page administrator at Black Box Social Media, a social media marketing company out of Austin Texas, shares his story on one of their clients Facebook pages hacked. ‘On Sunday morning I logged onto Facebook to make an update to one of our clients accounts and found that my administrator privilege was no longer there. I contacted the other page administrator and the client themselves and found that all of our administration priveleges were revoked. At first I thought it was some sort of bug or mistake, but after a little searching on Google I found another Facebook Page administrator that had just posted that their Fan Page was hijacked. Upon visiting their fanpage I saw an administrators post that read: ‘Happy Valentine’s Day !’ The exact same post was posted on our clients page at the exact same time of day with the same spacing between the ‘y’ in Day and the exclamation point. I thought this had to be more than coincidence.”
In fact it was more than coincidence. The owners of that page had decided to fight back against the page hackers and began posting comments in response to the ‘Happy Valentine’s Day !’ post from their personal accounts.
Facebook Pages Hacked | Negotiations With A Hacker:
• Page Administrator: Would you mind giving us back our facebook page?• Hacker: what will you give to us ?• Page Administrator: We would like it very much if we could have our page back, please and thank you.• Hacker: What will you give for example ?• Page Administrator: 1 million dollars, give me your address and phone number.• Hacker: 1pyapal in 500$• Page Administrator: ok, whats the paypal account?• Hacker: yes• Page Owner: yes? How do i pay you on paypal without an email address?• Hacker: give us an activated paypal will 500 $ , because we don’t have any activated.• Page Owner: haha, your funny…..Ok, its done, now give back the page• Hacker: HAHA , you aren’t so serious• Page Owner: One thing is sure , we don’t remove page !• Hacker: I repeat , It’s your choice !• Page Owner: i put $500 in an account, how do I give you the account info?• Hacker: We will talk tomorrow ! Good Night ! The page is SAFE !
At this point the Hacker’s messages drop off for about 16 hours, during which time many others express their support for the page owner to which he responds ‘yes, we are being extorted to get our facebook page back…no joke. Someone please help, cause facebook wont get back to us. the only way to reach them is by email.’
The owner of this page contacted us to say, ‘I am the owner of Volcano Ecigs. I am quite pissed at this whole situation. I have contacted the FBI, Honolulu Police, every email through Facebook and still no reply. No one can help cause FaceBook is not corresponding. They just threatened me again today telling me that my page would be deleted again. If my page gets deleted, then I am filing a lawsuit against FaceBook. This is ridiculous!!!’
One administrator that had their Facebook pages hacked expressed his frustration by saying, “I think it’s ironic that I cannot add more than a couple of friends without Facebook shutting me down, but some Algerian hacker kid can add himself as an administrator to well over 1,000 fanpages, delete all existing admins, and extort money from the rightful page owners all without Facebook seeming to care.”
Another Facebook page administrator that we interviewed told us, “[It is] Just amazing how at the end of the day Facebook is an “ad platform” rather than a business marketing platform and when your business is held hostage and you are being extorted for money by the hijackers Facebook is nowhere to be found with no guidelines or methods for communicating something like this. You would think they would realize how faulty their security is after MarkZ’s profile was hacked not a month ago.”
So is it extortion, or just some hackers having fun? Why are Facebook pages hacked? One unnamed source that was affected by this recent security breach has a different theory as to why this is happening. ‘In the research that I have done, these hackers have a political agenda with their actions. I believe that with the success had by the Egyptian people last week, that used Facebook to rally support, these hackers are going to release some sort of message through the thousands of pages that have been taken over, effectively getting their message out to millions and millions of people simultaneously throughout the world.’ Whether or not this is true, time will only tell.
At a time when more and more business owners have begun using Facebook fanpages and Facebook’s pay-per-click advertising to promote their businesses, security breaches such as this mass scale hacking effort will likely make many business owners reconsider how much time, effort and money they put into this marketing avenue until these issues are resolved.
As of the publishing of this article, Facebook has been completely unresponsive to any of our inquiries on this matter.
OMG!!! This is very alarming!! Let’s all be cautious guys!
I was the creator & sole administrator for my fan page (company) . On 02/13/11 my administrative rights mysteriously disappeared ( Through nothing I did & I am the sole Administrator, so obviously a Facebook glitch) and then the whole page disappeared on 02/15/11. I spent a long time building the page and we have links on our website, e-mail blasts, etc. to the Facebook fan page too. Which of course won’t work now. This page is used by all our members for communications, discussions, events, photos, etc . I am the creator and sole administrator for this fan page.
It seems like a lot of people have been having this issue with Facebook lately.
This is very frustrating as this issue was caused by Facebook and by nothing I or anyone else did and no one seems to know how to help
or even responds.
Hey Tim, it sounds like the same issue we’ve all experienced. It’s not so much a glitch on Facebook’s part but a script kiddie or hacker that somehow got into your account and removed you as the administrator. On a positive note, it’s our understanding, that pages are not really deleted, but just end up being hidden when deactivated. If you can get a hold of the right person at Facebook then they may be able to reactivate the page and put you back as administrator. That may be tough however, since Facebook does not even admit that fanpages can be hacked.
Alright, here goes:
Today, 4 of my client’s fan pages, all of which I admin here hacked into. ALL admins on each of the 4 pages were removed. I did retain access to 2 of my 4 pages. Shortly before I was hacked, I tried pasting in that javascript code that allows you to suggest to ALL friends, but it never worked.
Do you think that’s why this happened or is it just happening to everyone? I have some explaining to do at a meeting tomorrow and I’m willing to take the heat, but I’m not sure if I started the fire, I just know that I’m the common thread between all the pages.
I have filed complaints through Facebook for all of the accounts that I lost. I even sent some through the ad team and told them that I have time sensitive ads that need to go out. I heard they get back the fastest if they feel they are missing out on a sale.
On a side note, tonight around 10 PM, I was logged onto 1 of the pages that I still admin and I found 2 unknown admins. There names are ANdi and Elisjana hoxha. (With weird lowercase/uppercase letters, like so) I reported their butts to FB too!
Also, after the hacking, some of my friends received strange posts on their wall in Albanian (I know bc I used a translator). The post said: How to Suggest (with a link here) <–which I won't post for fear that you will all click on it and blame me.
So anyone else use the code? I found the darn thing on Facebook!
Jennifer, that script is what they are using to gain access to admin pages. The one that we are seeing the most is the script to ‘suggest ALL friends’ but really the link could be anything. There is a hacker website that even has the script and instructions for download, though we do not want to post the link here on Black Box, that encourages the user to be creative and post a message that people will click on. From what we’ve discovered, once they have access they will then go in and manually remove the other admins, so I suppose they had just not gotten to your other pages just yet.
We are hearing of more and more people getting their pages back from the hackers, but it takes work and patience. Follow these steps and be persistent about contacting Facebook daily (eventually, hopefully, you will come across someone that can help you internally at Facebook).
As for the two pages that you still have use these steps to protect them from future hackings.
Let us know if you learn anything that we have not shared here and if you get your pages back. Good luck!
On about 19 July 2011 I mysteriously lost my Administrator rights to my facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/soki2u – and strange messages began appearing on the page which have nothing to do with music. I contacted facebook as well as Reverbnation, changed passwords, but have received no assistance from facebook whatsoever and don’t know what to do. I would rather delete the page IF I COULD, but having been bumped off by a hacker as the Administrator, I can’t do that.
Any advice / pointers would be most welcome.
Thank you very much in advance.