How to Prevent Facebook Hacks

How to Prevent a Facebook Hack on Your Page

If you’re like most business owners, you’ve invested resources in creating a Facebook business page that engages your customers. You may have spent years growing your following and building trust.

What if something leaves your business page vulnerable to a Facebook hack?

Here is what you need to know to protect yourself—and your business—from a Facebook hack.

How Often Do Facebook Hacks Occur?

Unfortunately, Facebook hacks are quite common. According to the New York Post, as many as 160,000 Facebook accounts are compromised each day. Users tend to be more relaxed about security when using social sites like Facebook, leaving them vulnerable to hackers.

How does this affect your business page? Facebook allows users to access business accounts through their personal profiles. Every person with admin control over your Page is vulnerable to a Facebook hack that could leave your page open to hacking.

Hackers typically gain access to Facebook pages through phishing scams, email attachments with malware, data breaches that reveal passwords, or users’ carelessness (such as not logging out of Facebook or using easy to guess passwords.)

Large-scale data breaches may happen less frequently, but the scale can be staggering. For example, in a widely reported Facebook hack and data breach, hackers gained access to nearly 50 million exposed accounts.

What Do Hackers Do With Your Facebook Business Page?

You’ve likely put a lot of time and money into creating the best Facebook business page and growing your audience of loyal followers. Your audience is tempting to hackers, too.

Hackers who gain access to your page can post their own links, attracting your fans to click on spam links—leaving them vulnerable to Facebook hacking as well.

They might create and approve ads via your Ads Manager to promote malicious content, with high spending that could cost you thousands before you can take action.

They could also use the information stored in your Facebook account for identity theft or to access other online accounts, including hosting, banking, or other social accounts.

All of this can cost you time, money, and the trust of your audience. While you may stop malicious activity relatively quickly and even recoup some costs, you could lose access to your page for a time. The opportunity cost of not being able to market via this platform can have a significant impact on your business.

9 Strategies to Protect Yourself From a Facebook Hack

Many strategies to protect yourself from a Facebook hack are standard online security steps you should use on every online platform. If you haven’t paid much attention to online security, start with the basics, then explore security features in each platform or app.

Hint: If you’ve been using the same password for years across multiple platforms, you’re long overdue for an update.