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Q. Thanks for your article about not using Facebook to log into other accounts. That was really helpful.
I’m having a love/hate relationship with Facebook now. I want to know for sure if my Facebook account was one of the 50 million hacked into. Facebook didn’t ask me to change my password, so is that enough for me to be sure that my account wasn’t hacked?
Is there a way for me to check if my Facebook account was hacked?
A. I’m glad you found the article Why You NEVER Should Use Facebook to Log Into Another Website. Ever. to be helpful. I’ve heard from many people who said they didn’t realize that once you log into a website using Facebook you may not be able to log out.
That’s good news that Facebook didn’t ask you to reset your password. Your Facebook account may not have been hacked. But you’re right, it’s good to check to be sure.
Update on the Facebook Hack
Facebook published a blog post last week with an update about the September hack that also revealed a way to check whether your Facebook account was hacked. Checking your account is easy and quick, so be sure to check it out.
You should also know that Facebook has revised its figures as it continues to investigate the hack. The good news is that they have found that fewer accounts were hacked — 30 million accounts were hacked, not 50 million as Facebook had previously stated.
The bad news is that 30 million is still a whole lot of accounts that were hacked.
Of the 30 million Facebook accounts that were hacked, 29 million accounts had information stolen while 1 million accounts did not have information accessed by the hackers.
According to Facebook, of the 29 million accounts that had information stolen, 15 million accounts had attackers access “two sets of information – name and contact details (phone number, email, or both, depending on what people had on their profiles).”
For the other 14 million accounts “the attackers accessed the same two sets of information, as well as other details people had on their profiles. This included username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or Pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches.”
The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported another Facebook hack update, stating that “people familiar with the inside investigation” claimed, “The preliminary findings suggest that the hackers weren’t affiliated with a nation-state.” Facebook Finds Hack Was Done by Spammers, Not Foreign State
How You Can Tell Whether Your Facebook Account Was Hacked
Checking to see whether your Facebook account was hacked is easy and quick.
Go to the Facebook Security Help page which gives more information about the September hack. That page also contains information about whether your Facebook account was hacked.
Head to the bottom of the page and look for a blue box with the notice about the status of your Facebook account. Hopefully yours looks like this:
But yours may not look like that. You may instead learn that your account was hacked.
now the negative: if you’ve been affected by this attack, this is the wealth of personal information they’ve accessed.
the below screen is for my personal account, which was affected. thanks Facebook! pic.twitter.com/aa7jaEepro
— rat king (@MikeIsaac) October 12, 2018
What Else You Should Know About the Facebook Hack
Even if Facebook doesn’t say that your account has been hacked, that isn’t a 100% guarantee that you’re in the clear. Again, Facebook is still investigating this hack so more information might be available later that further revises the number of accounts that were hacked.
The exact language from Facebook is: “Based on what we’ve learned so far, your Facebook account has not been impacted by this security incident.” So that doesn’t mean it wasn’t. It just means that so far Facebook hasn’t discovered that your account was one of the ones that was hacked.
Poll
Was your Facebook account hacked? If you have check to see whether your Facebook account was hacked, vote in The Wonder of Tech poll to let us know:
Your Thoughts
Have you checked to see whether your Facebook account was hacked? Was it hacked? Do this news make you less likely to use Facebook in the future?
Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!
*Facebook on Phones image (edited) courtesy of geralt via Pixabay and Creative Commons
Hi Carolyn,
Thank you for this important post. It is very important to have security software in the device from where you intent to use Facebook. Hackers have become smarter day by day and we need to outdo them in order to stay safe and secure.
Thanks for sharing these wonderful tips. Have a good day. 🙂
Hi Sajid, Yes, I’ve heard from many readers that they are frustrated with Facebook. So finding out whether they’ve been hacked may make the difference between deleting their accounts or keeping their accounts in tact.
If people find out they have been hacked they can take extra steps to protect their Facebook accounts.
Facebook is such a big platform, if not, the biggest. There are so many people being victimized by identity thieves and we don’t even know it. I hope Facebook would do a multiple authentication process for someone to log in to an account. Right now, you could log in to an account with one click once you’ve logged it in before. Really dangerous and scary.
Hi Adrian, Excellent point. By not allowing us to log out of sites we used Facebook to log into, these sites are putting us in danger of allowing hackers to access our accounts.
Best not to use Facebook to log into any sites.
I hope your Facebook account wasn’t hacked, Adrian.