Everyone has a Facebook page these days. As is the case with most things new, I resisted, drug my feet, refused to get involved with Facebook for the longest time.
But I eventually caved in to the hype. Friends, colleagues and experts said, “Social media is good for business.” “It’s a great way to get exposure.” “You meet potential customers and clients.” “Everyone who is anyone has a Facebook account.” I’d say it was about three years ago that I got my own Facebook account.
This week, “friends” began contacting me to say they had received strange messages with misspelled words from my Facebook account, but they were sure these things weren’t from me. And they were right. I rarely use Facebook, and I certainly don’t promote hearing aids and other things this imposter was promoting.
I’ve spent way too much time these past few days trying to discover what is happening—my account was apparently cloned/hacked. And I’ve been stressing over what to do about it—Facebook offers very little help that is useful.
I changed my passwords for Facebook and Yahoo. But the abuse of my account continued.
I followed the Facebook help instructions. I made a few calls—left messages, sent emails. After hitting nothing but dead ends while attempting to stop the imposter and after consulting people who know more about Facebook than I do, which is practically everyone, I closed my Facebook account.
But guess what? A Facebook account resembling mine, with my picture and profile, but with different contact information, is still up—the one that was started May 27, 2012—5 days ago.
Now we are spending valuable time trying to jump through the Facebook hoops to close that bogus, imposter account.
Has anyone had a similar experience? How did you handle it? Help!
PLFry620@yahoo.com