One in a series of posts on Facebook Security and Privacy

First off, don’t panic! Unless you have a really poor password, it’s unlikely that you have been hacked. Instead an annoying person has just created a new Facebook account, copied your profile picture and name, and is presumably now going through your friend list asking to become friends, and confusing all your friends who thought you were already their friend.

What can you do?

Use the Facebook “Report” function to ask Facebook to delete the fake account.

  1. Open the fake profile page (Just click on the name)
  2. Click on the ‘…’ button (to the right of the Message button), then click Report. Facebook-Report_thumb
  3. Select Report this profile and click Continue
  4. Select They’re pretending to be me or someone I know and click Continue
  5. Select Me and click Continue
  6. Select Submit to Facebook for Review
  7. Usually within a matter of hours, someone at Facebook will review the details and shut down the offending account.

How can you reduce the risk of this happening?

Review your Facebook privacy and sharing settings to stop non-friends from seeing your friends list and your profile photo.

Enable Two Factor Authentication to reduce the risk of your actual Facebook account being really compromised.