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 ...
So, Last week my account was hacked and I was kicked off Facebook. It wasn't my fault, but Facebook don't want to give me the account back and I'm passed caring. I've written about this in detail here.
But this whole process set me thinking about my relationship with big tech.
For the last 16 years I have been handing my data, personal photos, work information, location, interests and thoughts to an enormous faceless tech giant who has whored out this information willy-nilly, ...
I have today submitted a Subject Access request to Facebook Ireland Ltd using the sample Data Request form found here following advice the Ruben Verborgh's excellent blog on the subject here. I've sent it recorded delivery. Will it get through to a human being? Who knows?
I have contacted support about our Facebook Ads account which has been used fradulently, racking up 20x our daily budget per day. The process went as follows:
Search Facebook for several hours to find somewhere to submit an Ads related support ticket
Submit a support ticket to any of the departments as none of them are relevant to your enquiry but it's all that can be done
Facebook reply instantly telling you the ticket has been closed and tellingyou to type "Re-Open case" to reopen ...
Facebook provide a phone number on their Paypal invoices: +353 06505434800. This number is invalid. Facebook really don't want you getting through to a human.
So - I have a separate Facebook account that I set up as an emergency failsafe. I know this is against the Facebook Ts&Cs, but really, when the stakes are so high, the penalties so arbitrary and the review process so opaque it would be unwise not to at least attempt some back door method of decoupling your business from Facebook if you need to. The problem is, if Facebook detects this (which they will) they will block that account too. So far it remains active though I suspect it's a ...
I work all day everyday on the internet and have done on one way or another since the late 90s. I deal with Social Media, Payment Gateways, Account integrations, website builds etc. etc. I know my way around this space pretty well. But even I'm finding the fallout of my Facebook hack difficult to navigate. Having just lost my paypal appeal (which I hadn't disputed), I've now received two emails telling me the case has been closed in my favour
This is good news of course, ...
As suspected and written about here, the Paypal case against Facebook for taking payment in a hacked facebook account has been denied.
Although expected, this would seem inconsistent behaviour by Paypal. The grounds would appear to be that a legitimate agreement between myself and Facebook was used to take the payment. However my agreement with Facebook is for a maximum daily amount that has been exceeded by 20x (not 16x as previously thought) and the account was clearly being ...
I'm quite cyber-security aware. I have a Computer Science degree and run a web development agency. I manage hundreds of websites for clients. All of my logins are unique 20 character logins generated using the Keeper password manager. I have 2FA activated on all significant accounts. I don't share passwords. I know what a phishing email looks like and receive emails almost daily from clients asking "is this email a scam?". I'm generally quite careful in this area. Even so, despite these ...
