Some of your friends will be skeptical when they receive the bogus friend request and simply ignore it, but inevitably a good portion of your friends will accept it because they believe it to be legit. The scammer can then use the fake account to send friend requests to everyone on your real account’s friends list. When all is said and done, the “cloned” account looks a lot like your real one.
Once those tasks have been completed the scammer will post a series of status updates similar to the ones you usually post yourself, then “like” a few of the same pages that you have “liked” from your real account.
Next, he will download some of the photos you have posted on the real account and upload them to the fake account. Once the new account is created the scammer will copy the personal info that’s on your real account’s “About” page to the fake account. Unlike getting hacked, your Facebook account gets “cloned” when a scammer creates a brand new account in your name. That means when your friends receive spam, nasty IMs and other garbage in their newsfeeds, it will appear that you are the culprit who is sending it out (and in a way it is, because it’s literally your account that’s sending it).
In short, having your account hacked results in the hacker “becoming you” on Facebook. They can also send out friend requests to people you don’t even know in order to grow your friends list and expand the pool of people they can potentially scam.
Others gain access by tricking the victim into either giving them the password via a malicious link in a phishing email or installing a malicious app.Įither way, the result is the same: When someone hacks into your Facebook account he/she can do anything with the account that you can do yourself.įor example, the hacker can post on your Timeline to spam your friends with bogus offers and send them links to click for planting malware onto their own PCs. Some hackers break into accounts by guessing or stealing the passwords. When someone “hacks” your account they actually take control of the account itself. While the hacking and cloning of Facebook accounts are both extremely irritating for everyone affected by the fallout, they are actually very different things and they require very different responses when one of them happens to you.įirst, let’s talk about getting “hacked”…
Their accounts have been “cloned” instead. The thing is, many of the folks who believe their Facebook account has been “hacked” weren’t really hacked at all. In fact, you probably see them on a regular basis. I’m sure you’ve seen an occasional “ Yikes – I’ve been hacked!” post pop up in your newsfeed. If you’ve been using Facebook for more that 5 minutes you’re probably well aware that hackers and scammers love targeting Facebook users with all kinds of fraudulent activities.