When there is an account that is pretending to be your account on Facebook (or other social media platforms) that is sending friend requests to others, in most cases, this does not mean that your account has been “hacked” (i.e., inappropriately accessed by someone other than you).
In most cases, nothing has happened to your account. Rather, someone is attempting to “clone” your account by making a new account that appears to be you by using your information and pictures. When this happens, your account has not been “hacked”!
If this happens to you, go to the profile pretending to be you and report it to Facebook. The pictures below show you how to do it.
Given all of the hysteria about this right now, just do not accept new request from people on Facebook immediately and let them sit for a while — give it a few days before accepting them because if the account is reported to Facebook and then taken down, the illegitimate friend request will disappear.
If you’re interested to learn more about the real “Facebook Hack”, you can listen to these radio segments where I discussed it:
- KLIF 570 News & Information — Facebook says it doesn’t know what data was compromised
- The Steve Gruber Show: Shawn Tuma, Facebook security breach allowed hackers to control the accounts of up to 50 million users
