Hacking has become one of the greatest threats in the modern digital world. Unscrupulous intruders hack personal, organizational, and even official accounts to use them for unfair advantages including transferring money unauthorized. The growing popularity of social networking media sites has attracted their attention considerably and hacking of social media accounts has become quite commonplace. The big question is how to recover hacked social media account. Here are a few relevant tips on the topic that can help in the recovery of hacked social media accounts.
- Act Promptly to recover hacked social media account
Once you learn that your social media account has been hacked you must act quickly to prevent further damages. Many people are there that do not know how to address the problem. Some of the fruitful steps are –
- Change your password immediately and periodically.
- Use a trusted password management tool to store all of them securely and that can generate strong password automatically.
- Use different passwords for different accounts.
- Change the email account password also because that works as the gateway for hackers; and
- Never download suspicious apps and invoke 2-factor login verification when possible.
- Never Share Personal Information with Others
Your account can become an easy target for hackers when your personal information is shared with others. To recover hacked social media account, you should immediately change all such information and re-authenticate the hacked account using the new information. You can now use the double-checking and authentication generating a one-time password (OTP) sent to your cell phone and entering your account. This will prevent hacking of your social media account in the future. When your account is recovered always make sure to check the account settings and change information that was hacked.
- Check Whether you Can Still Access the Hacked Account
When your social media account like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or any other is hacked and you come to know about it then you must find out whether you are still able to access your account. The reasons for this are –
- The ability to log in means that the hacker has not yet changed the password to lock you out;
- In such cases changing the settings and password would be the first step to recover hacked social media account; and
- You have to use other methods when the hacked account is not accessible.
- Recovering Hacked Facebook Account
The following steps should be taken to recover hacked social media account on Facebook.
- Visit https://www.facebook.com/hacked;
- Select the option MY Account is compromised.
- Provide email id and phone number to search.
- Facebook will start searching for the matching accounts.
- The most effective information is the email id.
- You will not know the current password used by the hacker and therefore enter one of the old passwords you used to log on.
- On entering the old password, a message will appear – Sorry, you have entered an old password and you can use the reset my password button to proceed.
- Facebook will how you want to reset the password that is usually done with a link to your email address but as the same might have been changed by the hacker click on the button at the left saying No longer has access to these.
- Facebook will ask how can we reach you? Reply by answering with a new email id or phone number. On such an answer you will quickly receive a link and reset your password gaining back control of the hacked Facebook account.
- If any additional identification is asked for then you can send a scanned copy of such ID proof to Facebook online. However, such instances are rare.
- Recovery of other Hacked Social Media Accounts
Facebook is not the only social media that suffers from hacking problems but there are others like Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin, YouTube, and Instagram, among others. Incidentally, hacking is common in the case of Instagram as it is also the most used social media platform by celebrities. That is why hackers often target Instagram accounts. To recover hacked social media account, you can use similar steps as in the case of Facebook account recovery by resetting the password using an email link for the purpose. The good news for users of social media accounts is that most such sites have taken the problem seriously and they always come to assist the owners of hacked accounts to recover and regain control over them using the two common methods of resetting the password or resetting the entire system setting depending on the type of hacking of the accounts.
- Check for Indications of Hacking
To recover hacked social media account, you have to first learn that your account has been hacked. The following indications would confirm your doubts.
- The account has posted not uploaded by you.
- You are not able to log on to your social media account.
- Your sent account is either overflowing or is empty; and
- Many of your associates are getting messages or mail you did not send and most of them are asking for money.
- Common Steps to Recover Hacked Social Media Account
The common steps to recover hacked social media account are as follows.
- Update the security software.
- Scan and remove any malware.
- Change the password regularly and use only the strong ones.
- Use the restore and protect your account features offered by the sites and browsers.
- Always settle for multi-factor authentication as it will protect your account and make it easier to recover the hacked account; and
- Take necessary steps like resetting the system, log in details, and password when the hacked account is recovered.
When you can recover hacked social media account you should not think that you are secure forever. Hackers can re-attack your account again. It is therefore necessary that you take all preventive actions to save your account from being hacked. The best way is to use devices for logging on to use the account from devices to which others do not have access.
