Losing admin rights to a Facebook page is not only annoying – it can also be incredibly damaging if your page is linked to a business or a local cause.
Hackers who get into a Facebook page can change contact details, can share harmful links, and can even ask followers for money – hoping that the wider network won’t recognise a scam and will send money to what they believe is a genuine ask from the page.
All of this means that if you lose access to your Facebook Page as a result of hackers, you need to take steps to regain control as quickly as possible.
Reporting the Hack
If a page is hacked, it’s important to report it to Facebook and to make it clear to all followers of the page that the page has been hacked and any unexpected posts should be ignored.
This ensures that users do not fall foul of scams and informs Facebook that you need to go through the process of regaining control and admin rights of your page.
How to Verify Your Identity to Facebook
If you have been kicked out of a Facebook page and had your admin status revoked by a hacker, you will need to submit a report to Facebook, selecting the page that you want to reclaim from a dropdown list.
The platform will ask for the best contact email address for you and will then send a report to Facebook outlining the issue – enabling an agent to get back in touch with you directly to confirm ownership and prove your identity.
Perhaps the most important thing to note here is that this contact can take up to a week to come through. In the meantime, it’s crucial that you let members of your page know that any messages they received or posts they saw during the hacking period must be ignored.
How to Claim a Page That Is Pretending to Be You
If you run a business or manage a local cause and notice that another user has set up a page claiming to be you, then you can take steps to report copyright and have the page removed.
While you cannot take control over this kind of page, owing to the fact that you were never an admin and do not own the page, if you can prove that you do own the overall brand or name that is being used, then you can have the page removed.
This isn’t so much a reclaim as it is a way of ensuring that someone else cannot pretend to be you and use your name and status to trick others.
We hope this helps and gives you some insight into the power of Facebook’s reporting and moderation system.
