Facebook Hijacking Alert: BEWARE!

Preventing Facebook Hijacking

Facebook has improved protection for Facebook page administrators.  Now you can assign your fellow admin "lower rights" which can prevent them removing you as an admin.  Page admins can be assigned specific roles: The most powerful role remains "Manager", but there is also "Content Creator", "Moderator", "Advertiser" and - at the bottom rank - "Insight Analyst".  Facebook page managers have the power to send messages, view insights and create posts and adverts.  Crucially, they are also the only role which can access admin roles, and remove other administrators.

If SMC has helped or continues to help your company with Facebook,  you would be wise to check the roles used by your co-admins now - and adjust them as required.

Here's how you check who is an admin on a Facebook page that you administrate:

• Open your Page's admin panel
• Click Edit Page
• From the left column menu, click Admin Roles
• Type the names of other people you'd like to add in the open field
• Click Manager below the name to choose what kind of admin you want to add
• Click Save Changes

Giving a co-admin too much power may bite you in the bottom later, if their account is compromised or if they become mutinous and try to hijack control of the page from you.

PLEASE READ:  Hijacked Social Media and Business Accounts

Hijacked social media and business accounts are definitely the largest business reputation management problem today.  There are tons of social networks and business listing pages (or internet yellow pages | IYPs) that anyone can set up. Social media account hijackers set up impostor social media accounts for businesses and individuals.  This can cause major problems when the impostor social media account has thousands of followers and you want control.  A hijacker may try to sell you the account with the threat of deletion or defamation.  At this point it may be best to pay the hijacker’s ransom for your social media account.  If you don’t pay, you may lose all of the followers already acquired. Further, it is probably not worth the legal headache and cost of a lawsuit.

Similar to social accounts, online business listing pages are harder to hijack because there are more verification steps.  Even so, business pages get taken over by hijackers.  Most of the problems seen with business listings (IYPs) are created by existing misinformation online, aggregator websites and disgruntled ex-employees who have set up the IYPs and then don’t share access with the company. Social media companies and IYP providers have very little account support.  Deletion of either a social media or an IYP account can be devastating to a business’ rankings and clout online.