A Hacking Experience

A Hacking Experience

Recently I heard of another business  who was hacked  on Facebook so I thought it was time I shared my story. It was a horrible stressful experience, one I have not been able to talk about until now.

Me, Psychic Suzanne

Two years ago I had a business page on Facebook as ‘Psychic Suzanne’ which was very successful and I had 3000 active followers. My page was very popular and I did help a lot of people as well as getting a lot of business from Facebook. I also had a Facebook ad account which I used every week to boost posts that I had written.

Facebook ads

I remember that I had been selected by Facebook to work with a Facebook ad manager to create an ad campaign together. This involved weekly telephone conversations with the ad manager. The idea of that was for me to learn new skills on how to write an ad and how to target audiences etc to view my ad and hopefully buy a Psychic reading or healing.

The Hacking

We were half way through the campaign and I remember it was a Saturday morning. I got up, did my usual Saturday morning stuff and then mid-morning I decided to check my email. Well I got the shock of my life when I had an email from Facebook saying that my ad had breached community standards and my Facebook pages had been taken down, both of them my personal page and my business page.
I raced onto Facebook and sure enough both of my pages had gone. I tried logging onto Facebook but I couldn’t, everything had been immobilised. I was real panicking and thinking about how I could contact Facebook.

Money Gone

Then I received another email. This time it was saying that an ad had been created on Facebook and that my ad had been charged to my account. The ad was shown to be a link to Spacelink. I was shocked I raced to my bank account and sure enough a chunk of money had gone out of my account. I rang my bank and had my card closed and told them what had happened. Then they put an investigation through to get the money back.

Contacting Facebook

I contacted my ad manager, luckily I had his phone number and told him what had happened .at first he didn’t believe me but when he saw the bogus ad he decided I was telling the truth. He gave me a link to contact Facebook which turned out to be Meta business team. I emailed them at least 6 times and finally I got a response and they said they would refund the money that had been taken out of my ad account.

More Money Gone

Then another horror email came through and this time it was to say that money had been taken out of my PayPal account. I couldn’t believe it. So I rang Paypal and had the Facebook account closed.. They also put in a report to Facebook to get the money back from Facebook that had been taken out of my PayPal account. Eventually that money was refunded by Facebook as well.

Starting Again

So I had to start again with Facebook. There was no way I would get my 3000 followers back. But 2 years later I created some new Facebook pages, Suzanne Robinson and Psychic Suzy. Never again would I be allowed to have a page called Psychic Suzanne.

Lessons Learnt

So I’ve had to be resourceful and look elsewhere for business. Sometimes we get thrown off track and we have to get back up again, be resilient and not give up. There is always another way of doing things. I have learnt many lessons and I don’t think I will ever be in that position again. Precautions and actions taken and I will never put all of my eggs in one basket again.

Love Psychic Suzanne