(Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cyber Security Process)
As you may recall, last week I told you about my experience as the victim of a cyber attack when someone cloned my Facebook page and started sending out “friend requests” to my Facebook friends. (So that they could then converse with them via Facebook Messenger posing as me and elicit information to steal their identity, steal from their accounts, etc.)
So, now I will tell you what I did about it.
As I mentioned, my niece was the first one to notify me of the invite she received from the fake me. I also received alerts from other Facebook friends as well.
First, I immediately changed my Facebook password. Even though I felt confident it was secure, it is still a prudent step to ensure it is changed.
I then went to the fake page (I simply did a search in Facebook for my name and saw the fake one). I reviewed it to see what they had on there. All that was there was my profile picture and my cover photo so it would look just like my page to someone who knows me. Those two pictures had been copied from my Facebook page and uploaded to this new page within the past two hours. It did not list any information in the “About” section or any other photos. Luckily, there were no friends listed…yet.
Next, I quickly posted an update on my page saying, “DO NOT accept any new friend requests from me. Someone has created a profile that is meant to appear to be me with my profile photo and cover photo…I’ve reported it. Be aware of schemes like this and BE CYBER SAFE!!”
The next step was to report the page. To do this, I clicked on the three dots to the right under the profile picture. This pulled up options including “Report Profile” which I clicked. I then had the option to select the reason for reporting the profile. I then selected “Pretending to Be Someone”. I was then asked if they were pretending to be me or someone else.
UPDATE: Thanks to timely reporting the profile was gone within hours!