So, I’ve got my Facebook account back and it was literally by chance.
Three days after my account was hacked I received an email from Facebook inviting me to take part in a paid study. As this invite came from a real person with an @fb.com email address I agreed to take part in the study and sent the real person an email asking if they could assist in getting my account back. I received no reply to this message.
A few days later I received another email confirming my place on the study and confirming the time of 9am on 28th April 2022. I had to install camera and screenshare and was software and was connected in a video chat to a Facebook researcher.
The nature of the study? How users respond to support screens when their Facebook account has been hacked and locked.
So I asked the researcher if she was aware that my account had been blocked. No she replied. We went on to have a 15 minute conversation where I vented my spleen about how difficult the whole process had been whilst she scribbled on some paper furiously. I was then shown a series of screens where I was able to give my views on how they make me feel, how easy they are to navigate etc. I probably responded in more detail than most…
Several hours later I received a canned email from Facebook Support telling me my account had been compromised and to provide a new email address.
A day later I received an automated email telling me my phone number had been removed from the account.
Two days later I received an automated email telling me to reset my password.
And that was that. A few more password changes, a bit of 2FA stuff (including an email allowing me to bypass 2FA when I entered the password incorrectly), a few text messages and I’m back into my account.
Would I have got the account back had I not been a part of the study? Almost definitely not. Did the researcher really not know that my account had been recently hacked? I don’t know – she seemed genuinely surprised but it does seem strangely coincidental.
Worth noting my Facebook ads account is still hosting fraudulent ads though they aren’t running as I have cancelled my payment agreement and charged back the fees. I can’t run ads until either I settle the balance (I won’t be doing that) or the Facebook ads ‘technical team’ sort out the issue. Another “24 – 48 hours” apparently. “24 – 48 hours” seems to be the default quoted timescale. They have been quoting that timescale around the hacked ads since 10th April.