Your Facebook business Page has been hacked: what to do now?

December 11, 2020

By Alex Balaniuc

Facebook accounts – or any other social media account, really – are unfortunately susceptible to cyber attacks. Although any reputable social media platform usually puts the best security measures in place to safeguard their users’ data and profiles, hackers still manage to steal people’s accounts and sensitive data by skillfully working the system. But if you find yourself locked out of your personal Facebook Page, stick with us to learn how to solve the problem.

You wake up some day and open the Facebook app because you want to visit your business Page to check if your activity is doing well, but you go into panic mode once you see that you can’t do that anymore.

For those who don’t know, a Facebook Page and your Facebook profile are two separate things: a profile is your personal space in which you can share some info about you, your interests, photos, videos and such. A FB Page, on the other hand, is a profile that you, or someone else – the admin – created to promote your business, art, organization or brand.

Pages can only be accessed through a personal account that belongs to an admin. A Page can have many admins, so, if you can’t access it, first check to see if another admin of the Page may have removed you. If that is the case, then contact one of the Page admins and ask them to add you back. Don’t think that you can go back to being an admin by yourself, since only admins can add or remove people and decide who’s an admin and who’s not.

If you think your Page was taken over by someone else, it may mean that your personal account or the account of someone who works on your Page was hacked.

How to tell if your account has been hacked

How do you know if your account has been hacked? Well, look for clues such as:

your email or password has been changed
your name or birthday has been changed
friend requests have been sent to people you don’t know
messages have been sent that you didn’t write
posts have been made that you didn’t create

Once you’re certain of the fact that a stranger accessed your profile, you can go here and ask Facebook for help by indicating the suspicious activity you noticed.

If you think someone else who works on your Page was hacked, tell them to go to the Hacked Accounts section of the Help Center to get immediate help.

Another possibility is filing a report, but first make sure that you – or the other person – were actually hacked, otherwise Facebook won’t take any action.

Your account wasn’t hacked, so why can’t you access your Page yet?

Keep in mind that, maybe, you’ve lost access to your Page because you’re not the authorized representative of the Page’s subject or content, or another reason could be that your Page was reported and removed for infringing someone’s intellectual property rights.