SHREWSBURY, Pa. — Facebook account hacks is one of the top FOX43 Finds Out investigation requests. If you've ever had your account hacked, you know getting that account back in your control can be impossible.
Chris Santoro from Shrewsbury has been trying to get his Facebook account back from a scammer for almost a year. He said, "You don't realize how much your are addicted, I guess is a good word, to social media."
He followed the steps Facebook lays out to report the hack and nothing changed. Santoro eventually just created a new account, but all of a sudden the old page became active again.
His hacker started sharing posts in York County community Facebook groups. Santoro said, "My phone start started blowing up. 'Hey man I've been talking to you on Facebook for the 20 minutes, why do you want money for me to come look at that generator? and I'm like - what are you talking about?"
It didn't end there. Months later, the hacker starting selling one of the hottest tickets in town.
"My phone started blowing up once again, hey - you got Taylor Swift tickets? How'd you get them? Nuh uh. Not me," said Santoro.
Again, he tired to report the fraud to Meta and got nowhere. He said, "They would say it doesn't violate any of our policies. How can it not violate a policy? They're pretending to be somebody they're not."
Pennsylvania reported a 270% increase of Facebook takeovers from 2022 to 2023.
But it's almost impossible to know what the numbers really are because Facebook hasn't publicly released any sort of statistics about this topic. FOX43 Finds Out tried to contact Meta several times for the story and we never got a response.
FOX43 Finds Out also asked Eva Velasquez, President and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, if she had any scope of the problem.
"We at the ITRC are talking to thousands of people who have had their accounts taken over and are unable to recover those accounts," said Velasquez.
She also said no social media site has a true customer service department and they have haven't allocated enough resources for user account recovery.
And it's not just Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
She said the hacks come in waves and platforms like X and TikTok deal with the same thing.
"They have not made it a priority; they are not putting money into any kind of infrastructure that would help the volume of people that are experiencing this and they have no incentive to do so," said Velasquez.
The ITRC believes this will only change if there is some sort of government regulation.
Back in March, Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry and 40 other AGs across the country sent a letter to meta, requesting immediate action be taken to help stop these takeovers.
But that letter was sent months ago, and no one could confirm to FOX43 Finds Out if anything has changed. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office did said, "The matter is ongoing, and we encourage Pennsylvanians who experienced takeovers to file a complaint with our Bureau of Consumer Protection for mediation options."
There are things you can do to make your profile more secure.
For starters, use this story as a reminder to change your password.
And while you're doing that, make sure you set yup multi-factor authentication.
That's something Santoro has now - but wishes he had in the first place.
As frustrating as it is, there is really not much people can do right now if your page has already been hacked.
You can reach out to the Identity Theft Resource Center, they can help you out a bit especially if any other information was compromised. You can also file a complaint with the attorney general's office.
Something you should know, is that Velasquez says Facebook does not have a customer service phone number and any that you find on Google, will likely only lead you to a scammer.
If you have a story you want Jackie De Tore to look into, FOX43 wants to find out. Send her a message on Facebook or send an email to FOX43FindsOut@FOX43.com. You can also join the FOX43 Finds Out Facebook Page.