Hacking, Extortion, Death Threats, And International Fame!
Ok, I wasn’t going to say anything, but last week my fan page was hacked and now it's becoming international news so I guess I'll address it. I was actually in Vegas and Hawaii doing a speaking tour when all of this took place with the help of my social media team everything got taken care of, so here's the story.
Those of you that are my Facebook fans (if you're not go here now and 'like me') may have noticed that a little over a week ago I stopped posting my usual article updates and only a couple of posts popped up, including something about celebrating Kosovo's Independence Day (I did not post that). The day before Valentine's Day my Facebook Fanpage was hacked and I was removed as an administrator along with the other administrators that help with the page. At first we thought that it was a mistake or that there was somehow a bug in Facebook's system, but a little later on that day someone posted 'Happy Valentine's Day !' on my page. Since neither my social media team nor I had access to post anything like that to my fanpage this had to be the work of someone else, so my social media team went to work investigating.
Discovering The Fanpage Hackers
Over the next few hours my social media team discovered other fanpages that had lost their administrator rights that day and had the exact same posting 'Happy Valentine's Day !' at the exact same time it was posted on my page. This was more than just a coincidence. On one of the hacked fanpages the hackers had left a message saying the page was “hacked by:bl00dy punKK.” My social media team dug deeper and linked the hacker back to an Algerian hacker group that claims to have hacked over 1000+ Facebook fanpages over the previous week. We attempted to contact Facebook through every channel we could find but no one would respond to our emails with more than a 'sorry we can't help.' Another fanpage owner, frustrated by Facebook's inability to help, decided to contact the hackers through the comments section of their own fanpage. Over the course of several days the hackers did communicate with the page owner telling him to send $500 via Paypal or otherwise his page would be deleted. While the page owner did try to comply the page was eventually deleted by the hackers.
Getting The Hacked Fanpage Back
My social media team, Black Box Social Media, did not want to lose my page and decided that since Facebook would not help, they would start a PR campaign to hopefully get the attention of someone that would be able to help. They began posting a series of blogs, press release pieces, and social media posts to spread the word of the hackings. Because this was such a huge problem and no one else seemed to be reporting on it traffic began rolling into their site from all over the world. Since they were the only one's reporting on this issue hacked page administrators began contacting them for help with their pages and began sharing their stories of frustration with Facebook's response to this issue. Some of the administrators even went as far as contacting the local police and even the FBI to see if anyone could help, all to no avail.
Over the course of the next week more and more attention was drawn to the story and eventually a Facebook insider contacted Black Box Social Media to help with my fanpage. Finally on February 19th our administrator access was rightfully returned to us and we were once again in control of the Phill Grove Fanpage. But the story does not end there...
How I Became Internationally Known
Black Box Social Media continued to report on the story and continues to receive emails and phone calls everyday from other page administrators that have been hacked. Many of the stories are heartbreaking as fanpages are a great source of publicity and revenue for many of these administrators. One of the administrators that Black Box Social Media helped wrote to them yesterday saying:
"The hacker contacted me. He wants to know how I got my page back. He made a death threat also."
And then yesterday I became internationally famous... Ok, maybe not, but because of all of this my Facebook profile was shown on the Canadian news:
All of this has been an intense learning experience and I'm sure there will be more to the story as it all unfolds. If you would like to see the whole story and updates from Black Box Social Media visit their blog here. If you have a fanpage that you would like to protect from hackers they also released a walkthrough of how to protect your fanpage, you can find it here: http://blackboxsocialmedia.com/protect-your-facebook-fanpage-from-hackers/
If you liked 'Hacking, Extortion, Death Threats, And International Fame!' check out the rest at www.REIMaverick.com
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