In this Blog post I will explain how I got my disabled Facebook and Instagram accounts back that Meta wrote me saying was PERMANENTLY disabled and hopefully this can help you get yours back as well or save this post for a rainy day if you need this information.
(How to back up your Fb & IG accounts are on the bottom of this post)
OMG… Someone hacked and posted inappropriate images on my account. Imagine, I am a professional photographer and I run my company and pay my bills with taking pictures, this was a SHOCK! The hacker posted child pornography on my page.
I am asking WHY, what are they gaining from doing this? My accounts was immediately red flagged and disabled.
After the initial shock I realized that all my Meta Accounts had been disabled since they where all connected. My personal FB account, my business FB account and my Private group vip FB account, and 2 of my Instagram accounts.
15 thousand contacts and 8-10 years of content gone in an instant. 3 FB accounts and 2 IG accounts – Gone.
I was devastated to say the least, I had just hired a new ads manager and spent a lot of money to run some new ads and now my business FB account had vanished. As a single mom and solo business owner this was a big hit to me financially.
I learned the hard way of not putting all my eggs in one basket.
After hours, days and weeks of going around in circles on Fb help center pages I was ready to pull my hair out.
How can a billion dollar company with billions of peoples private and financial information not have a better cyber security and help center when you have been hacked. All you are dealing with is artificial intelligence and not a real person.
I contacted one of my clients, who is a FB expert. She travels across the country and speak and train companies on Fb marketing. She is independent and not an employee with FB.
She had a similar experience and was not too optimistic of getting my accounts back.
She sent me these links to her blog with all the information that she had.
I scanned through all the links and was almost giving up but thought I give a company that was listed on there named HACKED.COM a try. I researched them all over the internet first to make sure they were legit and they had some positive testimonials of people getting their accounts back.
After paying $29 to set up a zoom consultation with them, the guy said it’s a 60-70% change of getting them back. I was willing to give it a chance so I paid the $329 to get them to help me.
He told me to buy an Oculus VR headset from Meta’s store since ($399) they had a person and not AI on the other side of their customer service text box and to be able to use the headset you needed a FB account. I bought the headset and after it arrived and I followed the instructions that hacked.com told me to do I had a service ticket with Meta within days and they said it would take 5-7 business days to get back to me in regards of my accounts.
https://www.meta.com/quest/products/quest-2/
Patience is not my best trade and I am very stubborn, after 7 days of not hearing back I was writing them emails on a daily basis. I also hash tagged Meta with my new accounts that I set up to help me.
#Metapleasehelpme
#MetaHacked
#MetaIhavebeenhackedpleasehelp
#FbIamhackedpleasehelp
#Fbhelpmeplease
#FbpleasehelpmeIhavebeenhacked
I also filed a police report for the charges they did on my credit cards I had on file with Meta and my FB ads manager.
I filed a report with the attorney general for being cyber attacked.
Some of my friends posted on their posts to help me and hash tagged Meta & Facebook with my information.
Eventually after 4 -5 weeks of doing all of this I got all my accounts back with a note from Meta “We are so sorry we made a mistake “.
I hope this will help you retrieve your account(s), if this wouldn’t have worked I would have gone to the news and a newspaper and told my story next.
I am very reluctant to give Meta my business going forward due to their lack of care and service. It cost me $360 to Hacked.com and $400 to buy the headset (that you can return) and 4-5 weeks of compromised income but most of all it cost my loss of respect to this multi giant company.
If this was helpful please give me a shout out when you get your accounts back in your post. :))))
Ps: Back up all your business CRM’s and social media data once a month, put it on your calendar.
After 5 weeks of NOT giving up – I got my accounts back!!!
How to back up your FB account:
https://www.marismith.com/12-steps-secure-facebook-account/
How to Back up your Instagram account:
BTW – this is no joke, Meta headquarters are located on 1 Hacker Way
If you try to call them you will have the same frustrating journey of pushing different extensions just to get back to where you started, being referred to their online help center that is USELESS.
A pre schooler would run this help center better than this mega giant.
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