How to check if your Facebook account was hacked

Photo: AFP

Ever since the news broke that 30 million Facebook accounts were hacked due to a security breach, users have been on tenterhooks, waiting for signs that their accounts were comprised.

Well, instead of waiting and watching, you can now check to see if your account was hacked.

1. Visit the Facebook Help center while logged in
2. Scroll down to the section “Is my Facebook account impacted by this security issue?”
3. You’ll see a Yes or No answer to whether your account was impacted. Those affected will also receive a warning like this on their News Feed:

4. If Yes, you’ll be in one of three categories:
   You’re one of the 15 million users whose name plus email and/or phone number was accessed.
   B. You’re one of the 14 million users who had that data plus account bio data accessed including username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or Pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches.
   C. You’re one of the one million users whose access token was stolen but your account was never actually accessed with it.

So what should you do if you were hacked?

Not everyone has to change their Facebook password or credit card information because there’s no evidence that data was accessed in the attack.

Just be on the lookout for spam or scam calls, emails or messages because your contact information could have been sold to businesses.

If you’re in group B who had their bio info accessed, you may want to contact your bank or mobile phone provider and add additional security layers such as a pincode. That’s because hackers may have enough biographical info to perform social engineering attacks where they pretend to be you and use stolen data to answer security questions and gain access to your accounts so they can spam your friends, steal and sell your social media handles, or port your phone number to their phone to intercept two-factor authentication prompts.

Article source: https://www.samaa.tv/technology/2018/10/how-to-check-if-your-facebook-account-was-hacked/