[Here’s the story of how my Facebook account got STOLEN and subsequently DELETED in September 2023…

If you’re looking for how to re-connect with me on Facebook or social media, you can click here to skip ahead.

And if you’re interested, check out my supplemental article about what I learned through this whole ordeal: What I Learned When Facebook Lost Me]

You never think it’s going to happen to you… until it happens.

As a child of the late 80s, growing up in an era saturated with stories of stranger-danger, chain letters, catfishing, and every ridiculous scam in the book, I thought I knew better. I took pride in my ability to spot a scam or phishing scheme from a mile away.

All it took was a moment of distraction – not ignorance, naiveté, or misplaced confidence. Simple distraction, combined with a well-crafted sense of discomfort, was all it took for me to inadvertently hand over my online identity to a stranger… and suddenly it was gone, maybe forever.

I’d been getting the suspicious messages through Facebook’s Messenger app for weeks from an account named “Meta Copyright Infringement.” The message always read something like: “Your account has been flagged for suspension. If you want to dispute this charge, please file a report.” and there would be a link to log in to my account.

I wracked my brain to imagine what I might have posted, or what someone else might have posted on one of my many pages, to get me flagged for copyright issues. I barely use social media most of the time… what could I possibly have said?! Still, as an author/educator – and a faith-based one at that – it didn’t seem impossible that somewhere in my history of posted or shared content might lie something that raised a flag or violated someone’s standards of truth somewhere.

The truth is, I clicked the link early on, and, instead of opening my Facebook app, it routed me to a browser page to log in. I thought this was odd; but, more importantly, I didn’t want to deal with trying to remember which password I’d used for my account, so I closed the window and thought, “maybe I’ll deal with this later.”

Then the messages started to escalate. “Your account has been flagged for copyright infringement and will be disabled. If you wish to dispute, click here to file a claim.” And then further escalations came: “Your account is scheduled to be disabled. You must file a dispute within 24 hours or your account will be permanently suspended.” The messages were simple. The branding looked legitimate. They came infrequently enough that I could believe – at least there was a real chance – this might really be  a message from Facebook.

So, on one very busy day when my pocket buzzed and a new message notification popped up, in a moment of distraction, frustration, and uncertainty, I clicked the link again. It opened the browser window to a page that looked exactly like the usual Facebook login page. I forgot to check the url (always double check the url address before logging in from a link!) Eager to put this drama to rest once and for all, I entered my username and password. I clicked submit. And, instantly, I saw: “We’re sorry, your request could not be completed at this time. Please try again later.” I reloaded the page and submitted my credentials again. Same error message. So I closed the browser and thought, once again, “I guess I’ll try to sort this out later. I don’t have time for this right now.”

It wasn’t until two days later I got an email from Facebook. “Your account has been reported for activity that violates our community standards.” As it turns out, this was the first one that was real. My account had been reported for pretending to be someone else. I had a chance to submit photos and prove I was really myself – and this time I carefully checked urls and googled information about Facebook’s identity-confirmation processes to make sure I wasn’t submitting personal information to a scammer. Almost a week later, Facebook eventually did restore access to “my account”… but all that was left was an empty profile. No photos. No posts. Just my name, my email address, and my birthday. Over 15 years of recording my life – all my thoughts, posts, and pictures, all the messages from friends, even the list of friends itself – was all gone. Even the Pages I created for my businesses were gone. Worse yet, they still exist, but are no longer associated with my account. They belong to someone else now.

As best I can tell, when I followed that link from “Meta Copyright Infringement” and provided my login credentials, I just gave them to a scammer. The scammer was then able to log into my account, change the email address, setup a NEW account under my old email address, and get it reported for fraudulent activity so that Facebook would require me to prove my identity and reset all my passwords. My old profile doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I can’t even explain how strange it felt to search for myself and find… nothing. Whatever profile existed before, now it’s under a different name, a different email, or maybe it’s just deleted completely. Facebook possesses the technological ability to restore it all, but unless they do, everything I’ve done on Facebook since 2007 is gone forever.

I’ve submitted dozens of reports to Facebook explaining all of this. I received zero responses. I’ve spent dozens of hours web searching about this dilemma, only to find that hundreds, maybe thousands, of others have fallen prey to the exact same scam. No one has a solution. No one has been able to reach Facebook to get answers. Many have spent piles of money on various “restore-your-account” scams, but almost none have been real. The closest thing to a real solution I heard was one woman who reported Facebook/Meta to the Attorney General of California for improper business practices and did get her profile restored. I followed her instructions to the letter and received confirmation from the Attorney General’s office that they would contact the business in question but could not guarantee any outcome. I never heard anything after that.

This all happened months ago. For a long time, I just waited. I hoped a new solution would emerge, or that one of my many reports would eventually find its way to someone real. It never did. Maybe even more so, I think I hoped that this scam would eventually be publicized… surely this would eventually show up on local news, or someone – of the thousands of people affected by this scam – would figure out what it takes to rectify it. But now, several months have passed, and nothing has changed.

And, if falling prey to a scam wasn’t traumatizing enough, this realization has prompted a whole new form of panic for me – what do I do now? I find myself faced with poignant questions I never imagined I’d ask:

1. How would I begin to rebuild a new profile from scratch?
2. If I do, how would I prove to my friends and family that I’m really me?
3. Do I even want to be a part of this system anymore?

A part of me has always despised most everything social media has come to represent. What started as a fun public forum to interact with friends and family has morphed into little more than endless streams of advertisements and mindless, impersonal entertainment.

If there was ever a time to quit social media, this would be it, right?

The truth is, right now I still don’t know how, or to what extent, I will use Facebook (or any social network) moving forward. This whole experience change my perspective on what social networks are and how we engage with them (read my related article: What I Learned When Facebook Lost Me).

But the one thing I miss, perhaps the only thing I have ever really enjoyed about social networks, is the ability to stay in touch with people I care about. So…

What I Need YOU to Do:

If you know me, or have known me at any point in my life, and want to be connected on Facebook, please send me a friend request on my new profile by following the link below:

I’d really like to keep in touch. Better yet, I’d really love to reconnect with anyone/everyone from my past or present who still thinks about me. No matter how close we were (or weren’t) or how long it’s been since we’ve spoken, you matter to me.

Click Here for my NEW, REAL Facebook Profile

OTHER THINGS YOU SHOULD DO:

• If you attempted to contact me in the last ~6 months on Facebook, assume I did not receive it. Send me an email or a text message! I want to hear from you! I promise!
• If we shared GROUP MESSAGES on Messenger, I’m not in those groups anymore. Please re-friend me and start a new group to include me!
• For now, LEAVE or UNFOLLOW any Pages I used to manage, including @AliciaMarieFay and @AwakenNaturalSkincare and @TheBeMoreChallenge on Facebook. I’m still working on figuring out how to get these either shut down or transferred back to my possession, but currently I cannot access them and I have no control over what does (or does not) get posted there.
• If you have questions or want to verify who I am, please don’t hesitate to email or text me. (If it’s been a long while, maybe drop in a quick reminder of who you are or how we know each other.) If you don’t have my current contact info (if you’re not sure: my phone # has a 512 area code and my email is through gmail), use the Contact Me form on my website, let me know who you are (and how you know me), and I’ll make sure you have my current deets!