Last updated: July 16, 2022
Are you looking for a solution to avoid having your Facebook account hacked? Here are some tips that will be of great help to you.
Before giving you the tips for protect yourself from Facebook hacking, let's see how the pirates do to achieve this feat?
Use of phishing
First, there is the well-known technique of Phishing via e-mail or from a fraudulent site. Phishing consists in making a copy with an identical design of the Facebook site, and hosting it on a server. As soon as a user logs into this Facebook copy, the hacker can retrieve the victim's credentials.
Hackers are full of tips to deceive you with similar addresses (www.face-book.com. Etc.) or misleading (www.security-faceb.com), but do not be fooled: this page will allow the hacker to recover your identifiers.
There is always a good reason that will alarm the careless user for nothing: "Your account will be deleted if you do not connect from this page", "Following a hack / maintenance, we need your login details to secure your account ”, etc.
Be careful, don't fall for it. Just look at the address bar to see you're not on Facebook.
Unique password
There is also another problem that does not only affect Facebook: the use of the same password by Internet users.
Even if more users know to choose a strong password, it is common for a person to use the same (or a slightly modified version) for all the sites that he visits.
So of course, Facebook protects the credentials of its users, but what about other lesser-known sites with little money?
Let's imagine that your Facebook password is the same as the one you used for the site www.site-rempli-de-faille.fr. If this site is poorly secured, or worse, they do not store passwords in hashed form, a hacker will retrieve your password from this site and will try to connect with the same username and the same password on the most popular sites: Facebook and Gmail in the lead.
This is how you can have your Facebook account hacked in a few minutes.
Cloning Facebook accounts
Le Facebook cloning consists of the taking of your identity by a particularly malicious person. It completely copies your profile then toggles your friends with a message like "my Facebook account has been hacked / deleted / disappeared, this is my new account, add me".
To do this, there are turnkey software that can download an entire "friend" account. If one of your contacts on Facebook has been hacked, you can easily fall victim to it.
As soon as an account is cloned, the victim's friends are asked for different things "I have just blocked my phone if you can help me, you have to call this free number to obtain the unlock codes, but I have not , no access to a phone other than mine. Of course, this number is premium rate and if you think about it, maybe 4 or 5 friends on your list will pay €3 or €4 each. Imagine a hacker doing the same with 20 cloned accounts per day…
There are other more advanced attacks used by hackers to hack facebook account.
Protect yourself against Facebook hacking
Avoid cloning your Facebook account
Choose your friends wisely and remove those you added just because X or Y knows them. These accounts could have been hacked. If you are a victim, the first thing to do is post a warning in your journal (or "timelime") and send SMS to your closest friends who are less sensitive to the security issue.
The goal is of course to prevent your friends from leaving your profile to become friends with the robber. Ask them to block invitations from that person and flag the account as fake by following this link.
Enable Facebook login approvals
A good way to protect your Facebook account is to request a passcode when a user (including you) logs in from an unknown browser (and computer or laptop).
To activate this option, select from the drop-down menu of your Facebook account at the top right of the screen and click on "Settings". Click on edit next to "approval of identification".
Then check the option “require a connection code to access my account from other computers”.
By activating this option, you will receive an alert (see details in the next step) when hackers try to access your Facebook account.
Enable two-factor authentication
Double authentication will prevent Facebook hacking. It is in fact to receive a code by SMS or directly on the application of your mobile phone to validate the changes of passwords and other delicate manipulations.
On Facebook, click on the small down arrow at the top right then go to Settings> Security> Code generator, then on Edit then click on Activate code generator.
On your smartphone app, tap the Menu button at the bottom right and find the Code generator option.
On your computer, click Continue and enter the code displayed on your phone. You will have to redo this manipulation with all the other devices that you use for Facebook.
Keep an eye on active sessions
It is possible to monitor the browsers used and the times of connection to your Facebook account. To do this, go to “Settings > Security”, click on Change from “Where you are connected”:
If you discover a suspicious session (from a device you haven't used before), stop it.
Pay attention to which links you click
As I explained to you previously, your identifiers are precious. Facebook will never ask you to enter them from an email form. So always check the address the message points to before clicking. Also remember to log out if you are on a computer that is not yours.
Check your privacy settings
In settings at the top of your page, click on General in the left column and take a closer look at your settings.
Your friends list should not be public since the cloner will use it to contact them for blocking you.
To modify the confidentiality of your friends list: go to your profile, in the friends column click on the small arrow then on modify confidentiality.
Also, make a list of Close Friends and make sure that only these close friends can see your posts (so you can accept a new friend without worrying that they are a pirate). look this page to find out how.