A Facebook fiasco: Hackers cause woe on social media | GARY COSBY JR.

I’m not a huge fan of social media, but I use it all the time like most everyone else. I have, however, been deemed unworthy by Facebook and my account was removed by that organization.

Here is the strange thing. I did not do anything to cause this removal. My Instagram account was hacked and an unknown person created a fake profile under my username. I was not aware of this until I got an email from Facebook alerting me that my page was suspended because of my linked Instagram account having violated their terms of service.

First, I had never linked my Instagram account so I thought this was some kind of phishing scheme until I received about four or five emails from Facebook, all telling me my account was being suspended and that I needed to change my password. I did that and then was not allowed to log back in. I was told to go to my linked Instagram account to file any sort of protest to this decision.

Then it gets convoluted. There was no place on Instagram where I could file a protest regarding a Facebook account. Essentially, there was no way to protest the decision by Facebook. So I Googled it. Turns out, this was happening to quite a few people. And no one had figured out how to protest the Facebook decision. Finally, I found one person who had paid to add features through Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, but I wasn’t willing to sign up for the monthly fee to use social media, so I was stuck with no Facebook account and no way to protest its removal.

I did manage to locate the offending account on Instagram and remove it, but I still have no idea what was posted. Facebook only said the offending post violated community standards. Here’s the thing. I only post photo content I have generated from work on my Facebook page. I quit posting anything personal on there years ago and I seldom post anything political other than once in a while posting a link to a column. The same goes for Instagram. I only post photos from work or, once in a while, some nature photos.

Of course, I changed my Instagram password and added two-factor authentication and I try to remember to log out after using the account. I don’t know how in the world someone was able to log in under my username and password to create this fake account, but it seems to have happened.

To this day, and by the time you read this, whatever was posted was posted over a month ago, I still have no idea what was posted to my page. I never saw the post and, had anyone at Facebook bothered to look at my account they would have seen that I had posted nothing other than photos, usually Alabama sports gallery links, to my page so whatever the offending content was it would have been completely out of character.

That and the fake account was under a username that implied some Islamic origin as Muhammed was part of the offending account name. Again, completely out of character for anything I had posted previously on either account.

Now the ultimate question is, why would anyone do this? I’m certain this is a huge scam of some kind or other, but why the world would anyone do this? I can barely remember the login info for all my online accounts, much less have the brain space to worry over hacking into or creating false accounts under someone else’s profile. It’s fairly absurd, but the world seems to be turning more and more toward absurdity and social media is a major mover in that arena.

I am not presently considering even attempting to make a new Facebook page. I have been less than happy with Facebook for some time, though I confess not unhappy enough to actually delete my page. Still, having experienced this, I’m not sure it’s even worth the effort to try to create a new page. I have often said that two things will go away when I retire. One is the smartphone. I am looking forward to sailing that thing into a river, metaphorically speaking, of course. I don’t want to pollute the waters, but you get the idea. The other thing is social media. I would just use it to keep an eye on what my kids and grandkids are up to, but I figure I can do that without Facebook.

I have been without my Facebook now for over a month. I haven’t missed it very much at all. The thing that irritates me so badly is that Facebook made it basically impossible to protest their decision or to even find out why they made the decision. I know social media is a very big deal for some people so for those of you who have important social accounts, check often and safeguard yourself as much as possible against intrusion because Facebook is no help once something bad happens to your account.

Gary Cosby Jr. can be contacted at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Hacked: How I lost my Facebook page | GARY COSBY JR.