Hacked with No Recourse

Here is a story that needs to be told.

I don’t know how many of you were my Facebook friends, or how many of you liked or followed The Grammar Diva Facebook page, but I assume that might be some of you (yes, I intentionally used the past tense). I had more than 2600 Facebook friends and over 4000 Likes on my business page. I was, to say the least, a frequent Facebook user and poster.?

On Tuesday, May 17, I woke up to find five e-mails from Facebook. These had arrived in my inbox between 2 and 3?a.m. The first two were?verification codes to reset my password.?The third was a message saying that my password had been reset. They gave me this information: Windows, Edge browser, IP address, and location. I don’t have Windows, I had never heard of Edge at the time, it was not my IP address, and it said Orlando, which is not my location. I guess Facebook wasn’t suspicious. The next e-mail said I was removed as administrator of my business page, and I was given that same information about the origin. The last e-mail said my video was ready. What video???? Possibly the video that was objectionable enough to shut “my” account down. Oh, and the next day I received notification of a $250 charge to my credit card through Paypal for Facebook ads. Thanks, hackers. So I needed to shut down my credit card and change all my finance-related passwords, my Apple password,?and my Amazon password (I got an e-mail that someone?in Viet Nam tried to get into my Amazon account and knew my password). And shortly after all this, I got a few e-mails about friends I had accepted. These were not people I knew or would request to be friends with. For a while, when I was still attempting to change my password again (in hopes it would allow me to get into my account), Facebook was sending me verification code e-mails written in Somalian!

?Since that time, here is what I have done:

• I tried to contact Facebook. Of course, there is no phone number or contact information.
• I tried to contact Facebook through Twitter. Facebook Security on Twitter has no means of messaging them. I messaged some Facebook-run account, and they never answered of course.?They provide links for help. No help.
• All their “helpful” links assume you can get into the account. My account was no longer visible to anyone on Facebook, although the business page is.?They are identifying themselves as a gamer and posting gaming things, said a couple of people who went to my page. I cannot get into my page at all.
• I went in on someone else’s account to report what had happened. No response.?
• I have changed my Facebook password a zillion times. Nothing. At first Facebook would not accept my phone number and said it was not connected with any Facebook account.?
• I finally found the “Shake Your Phone” option. You can shake your cell phone and report a problem. I have probably done that 50 times. I get a big message that says “I disagree with your decision.” I assume this means I disagree with whatever they found objectionable enough to shut me down — except it wasn’t me, and I don’t know what it was anyway.?My point to them was that I was hacked, and I want my account back. They give you 30 days and then they permanently remove the account. It says that it usually takes “a little more than?a day” to review the issue. What is a little more than a day???? That was, incidentally on May 20. They do say that because of Covid, they have fewer people to review the account, and it may never get reviewed. And once they decide, you can’t appeal.?But then, the new TV ad says they have 40,000 security people to keep us safe. I guess safe from innocent business people while hackers have a good time.
• I got another e-mail later on asking me to verify my identity by sending a scan of my ID. I looked up on Google whether this was legit; does Facebook ask for ID verification this way? and Google entries said yes, so I sent a scan of my driver’s license. I got an e-mail back saying they received it.?I looked at the e-mail requesting this a day or two ago, and it looked questionable to me.?It didn't do any good if it was legit anyway.
• A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Facebook saying that some other e-mail address, which they provided me, had been verified and removed from my account, so now I could log in on my usual e-mail again. That e-mail made no sense, and I still could do nothing.?
• I tweeted about my issue and saw many people had the same exact problem with no response at all. A couple of people offered to help, but I didn’t want to pay for a subscription and I didn’t trust random people offering to help.?
• A colleague of mine knew someone who might be able to help, but I e-mailed and got no response.?
• Finally, I gave up and opened a new e-mail account and used it to open a new Facebook account. I started to collect friends and decided to just have people I know. I still had no business page, but I posted a few business-related posts. Oddly enough, those posts traveled over to my old business page, although my new personal page did not show that I was connected to my business page — and I could not post directly on my business page.?
• A couple of days later, Facebook notified me that they thought I was using multiple accounts, so they shut down my new account. My old account is still visible when I try to change my password, although no one can get in, including me. But the new one is completely gone.?
• I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Facebook has lots of complaints like mine, but they never respond to the BBB.?
• I am considering writing Facebook a registered letter. They do have an address on their e-mails. It says their address is One Facebook Way. Oddly enough, the Better Business?Bureau lists their address as One Hacker Way, which is more like it.?

Losing Facebook means that in addition to losing my personal and business pages, I lose Messenger and Instagram, both of which I used.?

What else can I say? If you would like to go into my business page and report this situation, I would appreciate it. This should not be happening. Identity theft is a crime.