How to retrieve hacked social media accounts

How to retrieve hacked social media accounts: Social media account hacks are becoming a common occurrence, affecting different categories of people, from politicians, brands, celebrities, other high profile accounts to the heads of social networks themselves. But they also trickle down to individuals and small business accounts in striking numbers.

A social media profile is a valuable tool for corporations and celebrities to disseminate information and spread awareness, but it’s also a broad, easily exploited, and often unregulated attack surface. If the page itself is compromised, the brand image can be tarnished and trusting users can be tricked and scammed using the profile.

Here are few methods used by hackers to gain access to victims’ social media accounts:

• Man in the Middle Attack: This type of attack occurs when a hacker privately steals and modifies the communication between the sender and receiver. A user may think he is communicating with a legitimate user, but actually, all the conversation is passing through a hacker, and he possibly alters their communication without their knowledge. This mostly happens when you log in to your social media account through a third party say a mobile game that allows you to connect to Facebook. retrieve hacked social media accounts
• Phishing Attack: In this type of attack, a hacker will make a fake social media login page that looks legitimate and share it with victims to get login from a fake site. When a victim enters its credentials, it directly redirects to the hacker’s machine. This is the most effective technique because many users can not differentiate between the real and fake sites’ login pages and get fooled by giving their credentials. This attack requires persistence and excellent skills for making the victim log in from a duplicate fake page.

Taking the following security measures can help protect your social media account from hacks;

• Invest in good antivirus that can detect any anomalies on your device
• When logging in through a browser, double-check the URLs before putting in your credentials or any personal information.
• Clean your cookies from browser between 5-6 days and try to avoid public wifi.
• Always download software from a trusted site and look out for phishing emails
• Hackers tend to access social media account through email, so try and make sure your email is secure.
• Change your social media password regularly.
• Use different passwords on individual accounts.
• Use a password management tool allowing you to have strong and different passwords for different accounts.
• Enable login verification when possible and enable two-factor authentication to further protect your account.
• If you have been hacked and you use the same password on multiple social media account, make sure to go through them and change the passwords.
• Never give out your password.

Here are what to do in case any of your social media accounts got hacked:

INSTAGRAM – retrieve hacked social media accounts

If you still have access to the email you used in creating your account and your username has not been changed yet, just click on reset my password on the log in page, enter the email associated with the account and a password reset link will be sent to your mail. This is a straightforward way.

Another way you can go about this is when you don’t have access to the email connected to your account. Using the mobile app, click on the get help logging in option directly below the login field. Following the steps, you will be required to enter the email you use in creating your account and a contact email, make sure you use a different email to ensure that the mail gets to you safely. Instagram provides three options following the email fields: Company or Brand Account, Personal Account With Photos Of Me, and Personal Account Without Photos Of Me. Selecting the most appropriate option will help Instagram to more efficiently verify your account.

You should hear back from Instagram shortly with the verification code and instructions. You will be told to write down the verification code on paper and take a selfie with it, so they will be able to verify with the picture on your Instagram profile.  If you do not have pictures of yourself on your account, verifying your account will be more difficult and potentially not possible.

FACEBOOK – retrieve hacked social media accounts

If you believe your Facebook account has been compromised follow the following steps:

 Step 1: visit facebook hacked account resource page. Here you will be instructed to enter the email or phone number connected to your account to search for your profile. If you can’t find your profile enter something different to what you entered before.

Step 2: Facebook will instruct you to enter old or current password. Since your account is hacked you don’t know the current password, just input the old password.

Step 3:Since you entered an old password Facebook will tell you sorry you entered an old password. At this point click on reset my password to move forward.

Step 4: Change the email you will be receiving the password reset link by clicking on no longer have access to this referring to the present email. 

Step 5: Change your email to a trusted one and wait for the password reset link to be sent.

In some cases, additional verification like Driver’s Licence, National Passport might be required to further verify your identity.

These methods are common for most social media account retrieval processes. Although you can contact an expert to help you retrieve your handle without you going through all these hassles. Contact Cybersploit for any social media account retrieval, they are the best in the field.

retrieve hacked social media accounts