Facebook Hack

LegacyUser

Hi all, I hope I'm in the right place.

I have a 14 year old son who is like most other teenagers, he's into music, some sport, likes his friends, doesn't hate school (which I think is the big difference from me when I was his age) plays with his xbox and he has a facebook account.

One of his friends txtd him and asked what was up with his FB page. When he checked it there were messages posted all over it about pubic washing, nipple hair, etc. Nothing mental from my point of view but very very stressful for a 14 year old.

Someone obviously hacked his account. He thinks it was one of the lads in his year who is a general nuicence and has previously made a pest of himself around my youngfella, (mild bullying). If this is him then this is a new twist.

This lad has asked to be FB buddies (I don't know the terminology, I don't like FB) on a few occasions but my youngfella has always declined. Now my fellas page has him shown as a buddy and he's left a message saying he was laughing his ass off.

It has been reported to FB. I now think I should take this further after all it is hacking and it is bullying. Should I report it to the Guards, the school or am I just taking this to seriously. My young fella has taken all this badly, he wants to thump this fella's lights out on Monday and it has affected his study and he is in the middle of his pres for the JC. What do you think?

cynder

I dont see how getting the guards involved will solve anything, make sure he changes his password, and make it a hard one.

Delete all the foul messages that were left on his account, put up a status saying the account was hacked and leave it at that.

Thats what i would do anyway...

Lola92

If you have not already deleted the statuses posted you can take screen shots and print these out as evidence. Also check and see where the last log in was from (you can do this from settings).

If your child has been bullied by this guy in the past I would take it to the guards. It probably won't go anywhere but to have it on record will be in your favour if this happens again. A conversation between this boy and the guards would probably be enough to shake him up not to do it again.

As a bit of an aside, I have my facebook account set up so that I am the only one who can log in to it. If someone tries to access the account from a computer or device other that my own pc a text message is sent to my mobile phone with a one off code. This must be entered along with my standard log in details to get in to the account.

Also be sure to change all of his log in detail and passwords. Make sure he knows how important it is not to share these with friends as you never know who might get their hands on them.

ollie1

Sounds more like a virus on computer seen it happen a few times on people's pages.

barfizz

First verify if the account has been hacked or not.

Hacking a FB account is in effect identity theft if the person posted comments under your sons name. This may sound pretty extreme, but that is what has happened.

The person concerned needs to be made aware of the severity of their actions. I don't necessarily think that either the Guards or school needs to be involved, if you believe that the parents of the person will act in a responsible manner as regards appropriate punishment.

It is not clear from your message if they "posted to your sons wall" from their own account or if they wrote comments pretending to be your son, there is a difference so find out which has happened, and act accordingly.

I would suggest you take screenshot of the comments to show to the parents of the hacker. and then as said by Grindewald, delete the comments, un-friend the hacker, change the password.

Keys to password strength: length and complexity
An ideal password is long and has letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers.

Whenever possible, use eight characters or more.

Don't use the same password for everything. Cybercriminals steal passwords on websites with very little security, and then they try to use that same password and user name in more secure environments, such as banking websites.

The greater the variety of characters in your password, the better. common letter-to-symbol conversions, such as changing "and" to "&" or "to" to "2."

Use the entire keyboard, not just the letters and characters you use or see most often.

al28283

Unlikely his facebook account has been hacked. Most likely your son was on facebook somewhere else and forgot to log out properly

KittyeeTrix

Lola92 wrote: »

As a bit of an aside, I have my facebook account set up so that I am the only one who can log in to it. If someone tries to access the account from a computer or device other that my own pc a text message is sent to my mobile phone with a one off code. This must be entered along with my standard log in details to get in to the account.

.

Hey Lola92, How'd you go about setting this up??
I've never heard of this before...:)

Lola92

KittyeeTrix wrote: »

Hey Lola92, How'd you go about setting this up??
I've never heard of this before...:)

I found it when messing around with the new security settings after the last interface change. I'll have a look and send you a link

Lola92

Settings > Security Settings > Login Notifications & Login Approvals.

You can it to phone or email notification or both.

al28283

I don't think this will help if he is not logging out correctly

I'd assume his password was something like "password". I'd also assume the person who accessed the account just guessed the password.

As mentioned above, just pick a stronger password for the Facebook account AND the email account associated with it. Use different passwords on both!

kirving

Also, another easy way to "hack" a Facebook account is to do it through the persons email.

The hacker will say they forgot the email password, and will be presented with a security question, most of which are things like mothers maiden name or city of birth. Pretty easily guessed by someone who knows you.

Once they have access to the email associated with the Facebook account, they then go to Facebook and say they forgot their password, and Facebook will email a reset link to the email address...

Kevin Irving

Kevin Irving wrote: »

Also, another easy way to "hack" a Facebook account is to do it through the persons email.

The hacker will say they forgot the email password, and will be presented with a security question, most of which are things like mothers maiden name or city of birth. Pretty easily guessed by someone who knows you.

Once they have access to the email associated with the Facebook account, they then go to Facebook and say they forgot their password, and Facebook will email a reset link to the email address...

Very good advice. You would be amazed at some of the questions people put up. Also, if a person is good with Google, they can sometimes find the answer to the security questions.

One main bit of advice if to write your own question (if possible) and make the answer completely unrelated to it. Also changing your password and security question every couple of months may be good idea.

Daisy M

Just to advise you kids do this to each other all the time. They share and swap passwords and "frape" each other. Your does sound more serious but your sons friends who saw the status' will have known your son was "fraped" and it wasnt him posting crap. Change the email address and make sure it can not be seen by your sons friends. You can also block this "friend" of your sons so he will not be even able to find him to send a message or friend request.

CIARAN_BOYLE

most probably he logged in somewhere else with a keylogger or else he forgot to log off somewhere else.

That is the cause of 90% or more of 'frapes' btw I hate that terminology

lace

Hacking Facebook accounts is uncommon these days. It's more likely that your son forgot to log out from a computer somewhere or that someone saw him enter his password. This is called a "frape" rather than a "hack" and is extremely common. You need to be sure that your son changes the passwords to both his Facebook and email accounts just in case. Be sure both passwords are different - at least 8 characters long and a mixture of both upper and lower case letters, numbers and (if possible) punctuation.

Before this, however, you need to take screenshots of anything posted by the "hacker".

Next, I would suggest contacting the school as online bullying should be covered in their anti-bullying policy. They are obliged to take heed and take action in matters like this. Show the screenshots to the principal and let them know about the history (previous bullying) with the kid you suspect.

If this doesn't give you any satisfaction, file a complaint with the Gardai. Bring along all the screen shots and be sure they take it seriously. They probably won't do much but it's better that they have a complaint on file in case anything like this happens in future (although hopefully it won't).

With the help of the school and the Gardai, you should be able to get to the bottom of this, contact the parents and be sure they know what their kid has done and the harm it has caused. If it's causing your child distress or upset then it is important and you're not overreacting.

syklops

There have been a couple of posts on here advising the password include letters and numbers and punctuation. This is not entirely correct. From a brute force point of view, longer passwords are mathematically stronger. Some posters have suggested 8 as the minimum number of characters, I would advise 10 or 12 or even longer. This can be done easily enough by marrying three common words that you know for a reason but another person could not find or look up. So for example, the first album you bought, first girlfriends name and a place you want to visit. So, onejessicamoscow is a 17 character password which is easy to remember(meaning you dont have to write it down).

As others have said, I would guess that your son left his facebook logged in somewhere and this person did this digital graffitti also known as fraping. The other thing that could have happened is this person hijacked the account using firesheep or droid sheep, these are 2 applications one is a firefox add on the other is an android app which allows you to hijack other peoples accounts if they are working off the same network. To counteract this I recommend using an add on in Firefox called HTTPS Everywhere, which forces the use of SSL encryption when accessing sites. While this too can be circumvented with a bit of forethought, I am assuming this was a relativly low-tech attack.

BengaLover

Off topic, but did anyone see the documentary about faceook hacking/trolling/bullying that was on tv the other week? V disturbing, but very informative.

Jhcx

I havent read through all the comments. but I have set up the verify settings on my facebook. this is linked to my mobile. Any person or device that tries to log into my facebook account a text is sent to me asking me to enter a pin code. Once this is done Facebook ask me to name the computer. With out the pin no one can access it without your knowledge eg your at home someone at school tries to log into your facebook. you get a text asking to enter the pin required. Best thing facebook have to offer imo.

So if you feel it could reoccur, you can set it to go to your mobile of course this proves difficulty for your son who when he tries to log into it from other computers wont be allowed