What Do I Do If Someone Hacked My Facebook?

Facebook not only allows you to stay in contact with friends, family members and other personal contacts, it also provides you access to personal contact information for each. For this and other reasons, someone else gaining authorized access to your Facebook account -- in other words, "hacking" it -- is a serious problem you should deal with immediately.

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Signs of Hacking
- Several signs can alert you to your Facebook account being hacked. For example, you may receive messages and comments from friends that raise exceptions to posts you recently make. If you visit your Facebook Wall and notice posts you haven't made appear there, you can be sure your account was hacked. In other instances, you're simply unable to log in to your account using the email address assigned to your account and the correct password.
Causes of Hacking
- Several potential scenarios exist which result in your Facebook account being hacked, but most involve a small mistake on your part. Namely, clicking on the post of someone else whose account has been hacked. The reason avoiding these posts is difficult -- and why it's such as useful tactic for hackers -- is that there is no sure way to know that a post was made as the result of hacking. As a general rule, if a friend makes a post that seems out of character, particularly if it is obscene or pornographic in nature, don't click it.
Securing Your Account
- Once you have determined that your account has been hacked, Facebook recommends that you secure your account to lock the hacker out of it. Visit Facebook's "Secure My Account" page results in a "roadblock" being placed on your account, one you overturn only by successfully identifying your Facebook friends from pictures in which they're tagged. After this, Facebook allows you to change your password -- and strongly recommends you change passwords for your email account and any other account associated with Facebook, in case the hacker also gained access to those accounts.
Notifying Friends and Family
- Once you've secured your account, make a post to your Facebook "News Feed" that informs your friends, family members and other Facebook contacts that your account was hacked. Assure them that it wasn't you who made the obscene or pornographic posts and instruct them to secure their own accounts if they clicked any of the posts. Doing so allows you and your Facebook contacts to practice the most effective form of hacker removal -- prevention.