Last Friday, at 7:30am, I recieved a frantic call from a client. Her Facebook account had been hacked. Talk about a wake up call!

This was and still is really terrible.

The “cyber criminals” had infiltrated her Facebook profile, and then changed the email address on the account and the password. Once they had access to the account, they then sent out emails to everyone asking for money. This is known as phishing and Facebook has named it the “419scam”. First they hack your account and then they disquise themselves as you and chat with your friends and send out the emails. Western Union has posted a warning about the scam on their website, and they continue to educate their employees on this and other scams.

I immediately posted the scam from my personal profile page on Facebook, on Twitter and various other sources.

Once we realized what had happened, I sent Facebook an email regarding her behalf. There are steps that Facebook sent both of us to follow, but since her Facebook account now has a new email address and password, we are not able to access the account to make the changes. It is frustrating, to say the least.

What has happened since last Friday is:
1. The account is now locked and there is no more activity on the account.
2. Contacted Yahoo, but to no avail 
3. Contacted Facebook again on behalf of my client
4. Changed passwords on other accounts and recommend you do the same

If you think your account or a friend’s account had been hacked, go immediately to Facebook’s Help Center.