Today I am going to visit the current rumours on Facebook surrounding a wide scale hacking of accounts.
You might have seen on your timeline a number of posts like this: –
❌❌❌❌ Urgent ❌❌❌❌
All the accounts are being hacked. The profile picture and your name are used to create a new Facebook account. Then they want your friends to add them, your friends think it’s you and accept. From this moment, the pirates can write what they want under your name!! ….. Please do not accept a 2nd invitation from me!! Copy this message on your wall to warn your friends!
Do not share. Make a copy and paste this message.
Just in case, protect your accounts!.
For once, unlike many of these viral warnings, it seems there is some element of genuine risk. However, to put it into context. Firstly accounts aren’t being hacked, no-one is entering your account on Facebook, they are copying your profile picture and creating a new account – so in effect cloning you. Secondly, the level of occurence is in dispute, there is certainly no suggestion currently that it is all the accounts on Facebook.
So, what can you do to avoid this happening?
- Keep your account privacy settings high – my personal account is locked down so that if you searched my name, I wouldn’t appear at all.
- Keep your friends list hidden – this means that if people do find your profile, they cannot see who you’re friends with apart from mutual friends.
- There is no harm in putting a basic warning on your Timeline, along the lines of “I only have one Facebook account, please do not accept another friend request from me”. I would recommend rather than sharing/copying and pasting a viral post, simply post a warning. Viral content is too easily ignored.
- Although this isn’t a hacking attempt, it is important to change your Facebook password regularly.