The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowersbusiness owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. Hey, guys.Today we're talking about hacking and scamming on social media, how to spot itand how to prevent it. This is a topic that's been brought up a lot recently.Melanie and I have both had many questions about "how do I get my Facebookbusiness suite back". Unfortunately, it's not easy
And it's happened to us as well. We've had problems with ourMeta business suite in the past as well. But there are some ways around. Itjust depends on how much you use your Meta business suite. And if you're usingads, there's another way. There's another little backdoor there as well. But itreally depends on who is given access. And that's why it's so important, infact, I'm sure I speak for both of us here when I get onto somebody's actualsocial media profiles, one of the first things that I now is who is allowed tostill have access to the social media profiles. So I'd like you all, please togo through every single social media profile that has your business name on oreven your personal name on and make sure that you're only allowing access tothe people that absolutely need it, frankly.
Yeah. Because we've heard from so many people that have saida disgruntled employee left, they still had access to the business suite andthey ended up changing the password. They ended up taking the social media pageover for ransom, basically because they were let go in such a way that theyweren't happy about. But before we get to all of that, first, when you'resetting up your business page and your business suite, we are focusing more onthe business rather than the personal. Lots of personal.
We're mostly focusing on Facebook as well.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it is one of those ones that is hackedmore than Twitter or LinkedIn to be fair.
I think it's because of all the power that's in there.
There's so much because if you have your Facebook connectedto your Instagram and your WhatsApp, that's just giving all the power to thehackers and scammers. But when you set it up and we're talking business, notpersonal, because personal profiles can be hacked as well.
Though saying that wherever you have your card attached tobecause it doesn't have to be just business accounts, because I know thatpersonal accounts also get hacked because there's access to people's ATM cards.
Oh, yeah. Well, we don't want that either.
But it seems to be more prevalent on the older business one.Yeah.
Because on the business one, you've got your Ad account setup again connected with your credit card or debit card. And they could just Ithink that's one of the ones that you had recently that somebody was advisedthat their ad was in review and they haven't set up an ad. That's what sort ofsparked it. That's what they saw. That's the first notion that they had ofthere's something going on here.
That's exactly what happened. Yes.
Because we don't expect to get hacked. Nobody wakes up inthe morning, goes, oh, I'm going to check if my Facebook has been hacked.Nobody does that, although we probably should we probably should check firstthing every morning. Right. But one of the telltale signs is if you get anemail or a text message, whatever way you have set up your notifications to saythere is suspicious activity on your account, the ad is now running and you'regoing, I didn't set an ad. Then you should be looking at that. But before weeven get to any of that, like Melanie said, who has access, who is allowed? Andit shouldn't just be one person because one of the people that I've been tryingto help recently, he's the only one that had access to his business accountthinking that, well, I'm keeping it safe. It's only me. Nobody else knows thepassword. Nobody else. And now he can't get in and nobody else can get in tolet him back in. So again, it's one of those things, who can you trust insideyour organisation, inside your family, if you're one man band?
It's not even just that, though, is it? It's also down tothe fact that this particular client, it was actually somebody I'm mentoring.And the issue they have, they're both using two factor security and they'recompletely on top of it. And it's their business. So they've both got accessand they both do ads. So it's all completely above board. But maybe they didn'tuse a strong enough password. Maybe it was just something as simple as that.
Yeah, don't use Facebook123! But like you said, they wereusing two factor authentication, something that Facebook and all social mediatells you to set up. And even your bank gets you to set up 2FA, as they callit. But yeah, sometimes that's not enough because somebody can go in and say,oh, I forgot my password. But now I've also changed my mobile number. I've alsochanged my email address and get it changed over because Facebook aren't goingto, none of them I mean, we're focusing on Facebook, but none of them are goingto question that you've changed your email address because it happens so oftenthese days or that you've changed your mobile number. That happens a lot aswell. But when you set up your password, there are a few things that you canuse. Obviously, they all say set up one that has a capital letter, at least onenumber, one lowercase letter and a symbol. But it has to be at least eightcharacters long. And it has to be something that you remember. Yeah, well, I'msure most of us are guilty not looking at anyone in particular.
I have changed it. Okay.
Using the same password for everything.
I have changed it. It's not the same password everywherenow. Mostly.
I do it too. But there is something that you can use. Youcan use a password generator. But the problem with that is that they come upwith these really random things that you're never going to remember. I mean,there's symbols matched in with everything else. But what you can do is use apassword saver. Right. So you've got things like LastPass or 1Password wherethey will actually suggest passwords.
Are they expensive?
No. You can use LastPass for free.
Really? I didn't realise it was free.
On one device. Oh, okay, right. It used to be freeeverywhere, but now it's just on one device. So if you use it most on yourlaptop, then you can have it for free. But if you tried to log into somethingon your phone, then you're going to have to pay for it. But it's not expensive.One password is the one that we use here. And I think it's something like £2 amonth or something really inexpensive. That's nothing for the safety andsecurity of all your passwords because let's face it guys, it's not just socialmedia that we use a really easy password for us to remember. So therefore it'seasy for others to hack into. So if you have all your social media passwords,all your banking details, I mean, unless on one password, you can even storeyour credit card details.
Just so everybody knows we're not working for any people.No, we're not making any money.
This is not an ad for them. But they're tools that we havecome across that we use and find really useful. So it is helpful wheneveryou're setting up or like obviously, you've already set up your social mediaaccounts, go back in and change the password. Change it everywhere. Change itso that you're not the one waking up tomorrow morning going, huh? I didn't setan ad. What is it talking about? And realise that you've been locked out ofyour account, that you have spent years growing.
Some of it is glitches as well. Okay, so even when yourealise you've made a mistake, that access has been gained somehow and this issomething else we hear is you've actually managed to contact Facebook andyou've managed to get the account suspended and fixed and that sort of stuff. Butthen you can't regain access again. And the amount of issues I've heard withthat and Louise McDonell, who would be one of the Irish respected Queens, sheonly recently advised myself and she mentioned that if you're running asuccessful business account, you'll be running ads as well. So you should haveAds Manager as well. First of all, there's a top layer of being a businessaccount as a role of some description. And then there'll be a secondary layerof being an Ad account admin as well. That's a backdoor potentially. If you getlocked out of your own business suite, there's a backdoor through Ads managerthat you can access, but only if you've been made an Ad account manager. If youhaven't been made an Ad account manager, then that door is closed to you.
Too bad.
Yes, that basically is it. But the problem that some peopleare trying to overcome is, okay, they've managed to suspend the account.They've stopped the person from going through their account and trolling it.And there's no damage, there's no costs, there's no more spending, that sort ofthing. The account is still there, but then they can't reclaim it. And that isthe problem that we're experiencing now with some of the people that I'mworking with you know, they're trying to upload their ID and it's not working.It's not showing, it's not accepting.
Yeah. Like you said, the Glitches because the meta systemhas been updating for the last two years and it just seems to be going throughconstant changes. So when it could all just depend on the moment that you pressthe button to upload that information that they're looking for, that it turnsout to be successful or not. Plus, the ID to prove that you are who you say youare has to match with your name on social media. So if you have set up abusiness account under a personal page that is not your real name, you couldhave real issues as well. Because how can you prove that XYZ exists when youonly set that up so that you could open a business page because you didn't wantthe business page linked to your personal account? I've had people like that. Idon't want anybody to know that this is my business. Why not? But they set up aseparate account to open the business suite and then go, "I can't provewho I am".
We just wanted to do this podcast today to let you know thatyou're not alone.
No.
It is having an impact on our people. And there seems to becycles of it, doesn't they?
Yeah, there was about a month or two ago. It was all on Instagram.People's. Instagrams are all getting hacked. Now it's their Facebook nextmonth.
We got locked out of the Monday morning marketing podcast.
I did, yeah.
For like a week. Fortunately, we already had two factorauthentication and more than one person had access to it.
It happens. And we have a strong password, didn't we?
Yeah. What I do is completely different to what I do. That'schanged now. It normally does take us to have this horrible thing happen to usbefore we fully appreciate just how damaging this potentially could be to usand our business. But why wait, guys? It can make or breaks some businesses.
Yeah. You never think it's going to happen to you until itdoes and like my only says then it's too late or it could be too late. So sendall these things up in advanced guys. Go in today, make that part of your to dolist to change your passwords, to make them strong and to use a passwordgenerator, store it, save it somewhere. Remember people can still hack intoyour computer so save it on somewhere like Last Pass or 1Password and just becareful. Be careful because it's not going away anytime soon either and I wishwe had more answers as to how to get around it and how to avoid getting hackedand spammed and everything else but we don't. Unfortunately, it's one of thosethings that we have no control over so therefore what we have to do is to tryand prevent it rather than cure it.
And we've heard a lot of horror stories over the last fewyears and I think that's probably what's made us a lot more cognisant becauseof the roles we have and we don't mean to scare you but if you are going to beusing your social media for business you always want to have the bestrepresentation of yourself and your business at all times and access to itideally. So please, there are lots of ways you can protect your brand, youronline reputation, your revenue streams. Unfortunately we're getting more andmore normal use and everyday use of using them. So do heed this warning, domake these changes and we hope that you will avoid hacks and scams that willcome across your pages.
Indeed, that's it for today guys. If you have any otherquestions or if you need any help trying to get your Facebook or any othersocial media account reactivated do get in touch. We'd love to hear from youuntil next week. Bye.