How To Do Facebook Recovery If You Got Hacked

If you’re a small business owner, building your Facebook following, and investing in Facebook marketing strategy…

…you can’t afford to lose access to your business page or your customers on there!

And there are a number of reasons why you might lose access to your account.

It could be something as harmless as one of your teammates accidentally clicking the wrong thing and removing you…

…to something more complicated such as getting hacked.

And unfortunately, running into hackers and scams has become more commonplace over the years…

…where business owners are being scammed out of having admin access to their business page.

In fact, 78% of US organizations said they experienced social media phishing attacks in 2019.

And there was another report from Australia that said they lost nearly $23 million in social media networking scams in 2019.

So for today’s post, we’re going to talk about Facebook recovery.

We’ll show you how to recover Facebook page admin access and what to do if your Facebook account was hacked.

Let’s get started!

What Facebook Scams Look Like Today

So a few of you reading may be thinking, “I know a scam when I see one, I’m not going to fall for one of those.”

But it’s 2021, and the scams get more believable every year.

This is an example of an Instagram scam we received that looks almost identical in format to real emails from Instagram.

facebook recovery

And the only giveaway was that the link was not an Instagram URL… but it looked like one!

Another example is that we, as a digital marketing agency, get messages all the time from business owners who think they’ve been talking to us.

But what’s really happened is a scammer has been pretending to be us.

facebook recovery

Someone offering the business owner anywhere from $300 to $3,000 and more in Facebook ad spend if they give them access to their business page.

facebook recovery

According to one study conducted in 2020, 1 in 4 transactions on social media is cyber attacks.

So we mean, yes, you would hope and think that this many years into the internet being around…

…people would be able to pinpoint scams and avoid them.

But the facts are showing us that that’s not the case.

Scams are getting more realistic and people are still falling for them.

So before we dive into the Facebook recovery tutorial, the first thing we want to do is give you these things to look for before you give them access to anything.

3 Things To Look For To Help You Identify A Scam

1. Their name and email.

In the words of Gen Z, do they look sus?

This means, is there anything off or suspicious about them?

This is a screenshot of a scammer that emailed one of our clients, and her name was Natasha Hello.

facebook recovery

Hello is probably not her real last name.

We had another instance one time where a business owner reached out to us because a scammer had contacted them pretending to be LYFE Marketing.

And in this specific case, the business owner thought they had been talking with one of our team managers personally…

…because this was the person (brandi@lyfemarkting.com) emailing them.

It might seem legit at first if you’re not paying much attention, but if you look, there is no ‘e’ in the word marketing.

You have to keep in mind that it’s not hard for scammers to pick an email that seems legitimate.

All they have to do is find people who work at LYFE on LinkedIn…

…pick their first name, save their profile picture to use for the fake Gmail account they’re making, and wa-la!

They’ve created a fairly believable fake email account to scam business owners with.

In these specific cases, we always tell people the most surefire way to know you’re talking with a true representative from a company…

…is for you to reach out to them.

Go to their website and fill out their contact form or call their phone number on your own.

Don’t follow the links and phone numbers the potential scammer is giving you.

See if the contact information you’re finding aligns with the contact information of the person communicating with you.

2. Think about what they’re asking you.

Looking back at this screenshot of a Facebook messenger conversation one of our clients said they had with a scammer…

…the scammer was telling them they would produce 2 articles and video posts a day for them and the scammers would pay them $3000 a week.

So they’re offering to perform a service for you, where you don’t pay them, but instead, they pay you $3000 a week.

Does that make sense? Of course not! If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.

But this is one of the most common scams we’ve seen going around because what happens is the scammer says…

…“okay well we need access to your Facebook page in order to run the ads!”

And as soon as they get access, they remove your access to your Facebook business page.

3. Think about the legitimacy of their process.

Are they offering to do an entire business transaction with you over Facebook messenger? Or via email?

If so, that’s sketchy.

In a normal transaction where you as a business owner are partnering with another business to run your Facebook ads (or any kind of service really)…

…you would be getting on the phone with them at least once, you would’ve signed a contract with them, etc.

If they’re trying to rush things and hurriedly complete the transaction to get to the point of gaining access to your page or account all over email or messenger?

It’s a scam.

So hopefully those tips will help prevent you from getting mixed up with scammers in the future.

Speaking of Facebook messenger, here’s our post on Facebook messenger ads that you might want to check out next.

Now let’s talk about what to do if your Facebook page gets hacked or if you lose access to it for any other reason…

…and how to do Facebook recovery for your page admin access.

But first, here’s our new social media ads training course that you can check out next to master the art of social advertising.

Facebook Recovery: How To Recover Facebook Page Admin Access

The process for Facebook recovery will look different depending on what the situation is.

But the first thing you’ll want to do is see if there’s any way you can add yourself back as an admin either:

via a friend or colleague that still has admin access to the page, or
through your Facebook Business Manager.

So go to your Facebook page, click Settings, click page roles and scroll down to existing page roles.

facebook recovery

1. If you see that a friend, family member, or colleague still has admin access to the page.

If this is your scenario, have them log in, come to this page, and give you back admin access under the “assign a new role” section.

Keep in mind they have to have admin access to this, not just editor access or any other role.

If there is nobody that can give you back access, look at who the page owner is. Oftentimes it will be a business manager account that you created.

So you can check by going to business.facebook.com/settings/pages/ then select your Facebook page.

And if you’re a business admin, you’ll be able to click the add people button and add your Facebook account back as an admin to this page.

So let’s say you’ve exhausted those options and there’s no way to add yourself back in.

2. If you’ve been hacked and there’s a stranger or scammer who is now controlling your page.

This is something you need to report to Facebook and work with them on to get your account back in your hands.

So for these different scenarios, here are the URLs you need to move forward.

a. If your Facebook page has been hacked, log into your Facebook and go to this URL https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/1280439701975125

It will bring you to a screen like this…

facebook recovery

…where you can select your Facebook page and follow the prompts to get in contact with Facebook support from there.

b. If your personal Facebook account was hacked, and therefore that’s how your Facebook page got hacked, go to this URL https://www.facebook.com/hacked

You should come to a screen like this…

facebook recovery