What to do when you get hacked … and Facebook deletes you off the face of social media

 “I’ve invested my time, money and content over the last 10+ years. And in a hackers second … gone.”

So someone told me that when they got my Black Friday email last week, they thought that it was just good marketing copy!

They thought I was talking about a ‘hypothetical’ situation in or

der to make people want to focus on building their lists – and thereby wanting to buy my offer more!

I wish!

Unfortunately it was entirely real. So from here on out, I want to document what I’m going to do to either get them back … or start again – so that if you ever need to do the same, you’ll have a head start.

First up, what happened?

Well, despite having two factor authentication I was hacked. Someone supposedly in Vietnam took over my ad account and probably posted ads that contravened FB guidelines. They set a budget of £7888 a day … I’m wondering if this is some kind of auspicious number?! For them … clearly not for me!

Fortunately I cancelled ALL my credit cards. Total ballache, but glad I did it.

Any monies spent will most likely be returned by the banks – fingers crossed.

So how are Facebook supporting their customers through this?

THEY. ARE. NOT.

And that my friends is what I want you to focus on.

You have NO control over your FB or Instagram accounts.

It is virtually impossible to reach an actual person.

There is ZERO support.

I have tried every link that every person has sent me to get my account back. They all go back to the same format … you need to have a validation code sent to your phone.

The code gets sent to me, but FB tells me it doesn’t recognise the number and to check the number and try again.

GROUNDHOG DAY.

So I try the alternatives – supposedly they can call you or email you, BUT both those options go back to getting a validation code sent to your phone … and there we go again. Stuck in a loop.

So what do we do?

Well, the first thing is it’s made me wake up and realise even more how important my list is.

It’s the only thing we actually own.
Sure, I can start a YouTube account (and I will) and as an early adopter of Twitter I could pick that back up, but the truth is FB and Insta are the platforms I’ve invested my time, money and content into over the last 10+ years.

And in a hackers second … gone.
Now I’m not going to say these platforms don’t have their uses … they absolutely do BUT you need to recognise every minute you invest in them, you are investing in something you don’t own.

So make sure you get those awesome lead magnets and Pop Up Products out there so you start to move each and every one of your followers from FB and Instagram to your own email list.

And you should be doing this on every platform you use.

Next step for me? If I don’t get my accounts back this week, then I’m going to have to start from scratch …

It’s not how you get knocked down that counts … it’s how you get back up.

Love,

Shaa X