Learn How to Recover a Hacked Facebook Account
While Facebook seems to take security relatively seriously, it’s still easy to lose access to your account if a hacker has targeted it. If someone can figure out your password or gains access to your account through social engineering, it can be devastating – both for you and your connections on Facebook.
It is hard to find the best resource for regaining access to a hacked Facebook account, so we have compiled most of the information we know to help you recover it independently. If you think that your Facebook has been hacked, but you are not certain, check this tutorial.
Read: Facebook’s Recovery Options for Hacked Users Are Worst in Class: 2021 Report
Table of Contents
- Act Immediately
- Change your Facebook password
- Not able to log in to your hacked Facebook account?
- Password Recovery
- Family and Friends Recovery
- Report Your Hacked Account to Facebook
- Bypassing 2FA – Two-Factor Authentication
- Using Your Trusted Contacts to Change Your Facebook Login Email
- Facebook Recovery Links
- Not able to find your hacked Facebook profile?
- Still Unable to recover your Facebook account?
- If Everything Fails, Delete Your Hacked Facebook Account
What should you do if someone hacks your Facebook account? Below are the steps you can take to recover your hacked Facebook account.
1. Act Immediately
If you receive an email from Facebook about suspicious behavior, you need to take action straight away. The longer that a person has access to your account, the more likely it is that they’ll be able to change key information that makes it harder for you to win back control.
Go through all of your Facebook security emails and follow the instructions immediately. Click on “Change Password” and “Secure your account” and any other links that might help you regain access to your hacked Facebook account.
2. Change your Facebook password
If you can still access your account, then the first step should be to change your password. Watch our video tutorial or read our instructions below:
Log into your Facebook account, click the dropdown arrow at the top of the screen, then select ‘Settings.’
Now click ‘Settings.’
In your account settings, click ‘Security and login’ on the left side of the screen.
Please enter your current password and your new password twice to confirm it. We recommend using a password generator and password manager for security.
We also advise you to enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) that enhances your account security by adding a two-step verification system. This makes your account almost unhackable. Be sure to add your phone number and use the SMS verification system, not an app verification system. If you lose your phone and your verification app, you might not be able to log back into your Facebook profile.
3. Not able to log in to your hacked Facebook account?
If the hacker has managed to change your password and the email associated with your Facebook account, there are still ways to recover your Facebook. It’s even possible to recover a Facebook profile if the hacker has added a Two-Factor Authenticator.
Be aware, due to the pandemic, response time from Facebook has increased. Some clients get a response from Facebook after 30+ days (if you’ve uploaded your ID or submitted a form to Facebook). Some support requests are even ignored, while other clients receive a message saying that Facebook can only help in the most urgent cases due to being understaffed.
The best solution to recover any Facebook account is to read all the different security email notifications received from Facebook and follow their instructions. Click on the links in emails received from the sender “Facebook” or “facebookmail.com.” If none of the links like “Secure your account” or “Change your password” help, try to follow our Facebook recovery tutorial below.
4. Password Recovery
If your password is no longer working and you suspect someone has changed it, then your next step is to use Facebook’s account recovery options. You can view our video instructions of it below:
Go to the Facebook login page and click ‘Forgotten password?’
Enter an email address or phone number associated with your account and click ‘Search.’
Choose whether to log in via your email, Google account, or telephone number, then click ‘Continue.’
Enter the code you received via text or email and click ‘Continue.’
Enter your new password and click ‘Continue’ to confirm.
5. Family and Friends Recovery
If you can’t recover the account yourself, a friend or family member can help you recover the account instead.
Have your friend log in and go to the profile you need to recover. Click the three dots under the profile name, and select ‘Find support or report profile.’
On the report window, select ‘I can’t access my account,’ then click ‘Next.’
Click ‘Recover this account.’
Click ‘No longer have access to these?’ at the bottom of the window.
Enter an email address or phone number you currently have access to, then click ‘Continue’ to get in contact with someone from Facebook Support.
You may be asked to upload a valid ID like your passport or your driver’s license. Sometimes it asks you to upload it by taking a picture with your webcam. In that case, ensure that the room you are in has enough light to make the picture clear. All details must be visible, no corners of your passport or driver’s license can be cut. Once uploaded, it can take anywhere from one to two weeks to get a response from Facebook.
6. Report Your Hacked Account to Facebook
If none of the other methods are working, you should report the hacked account directly to Facebook.
Go to the hacked account report page, and click ‘My Account Is Compromised.’
Enter your email address or phone number, then click ‘Search.’
Enter your most recent password and click ‘continue’ to report your account. Facebook may provide you further instructions to aid in account recovery.
Facebook may request that you upload a photograph of your ID to prove your identity, as explained in section two of this article.
7. Bypassing 2FA – Two-Factor Authentication
If the hacker has added a Two-Factor Authentication, it is still possible to bypass it. When you try to log in and are prompted with the screen below, please click on “Need another way to authenticate.” Then the following pop up should appear:
You can then click on “Submit a request to Facebook.” It will then ask you to fill in your account’s name, your mobile carrier’s name, your full name, and then it will ask you to upload a governmental approved ID. Once you have submitted this form, you should receive a response within 48 hours to one week. However, due to the pandemic, Facebook is using more time to verify your uploaded ID. Some of our clients have received Facebook emails telling them that they could not review their ID due to being understaffed. If this happens to you, you should keep uploading your ID weekly until they can verify your ID.
8. Using Your Trusted Contacts to Change Your Facebook Login Email
If you have added three to five trusted contacts on Facebook, you might get an option to ask your trusted contacts for a unique code to regain access to your hacked Facebook account.
After you fill in a new email in the form you see above, Facebook can redirect you to the following recovery option:
Keep this form open while you send the recovery link facebook.com/recover to your trusted contacts. Your friends will see a unique code that they must send to you. Once you have received the recovery codes from your Facebook friends, add them here and click continue. Some of our clients have spent a too long time getting the recovery codes from their friends, making the form invalid. If that happens to you, you need to repeat the process.
After submitting the codes to Facebook, you will see the message in the image above. You should receive a link from Facebook to your new email address to recover your hacked Facebook account. We have seen clients completing all of these steps without receiving any link from Facebook; if that happens to you, get in touch with us.
9. Facebook Recovery Links
Here are the best Facebook recovery links to try to gain access to your hacked Facebook account:
https://www.facebook.com/recover/initiate
https://www.facebook.com/login/identify
https://www.facebook.com/hacked
If you’ve recovered your Facebook account, you should follow our account security guide to keep it safe.
10. Not able to find your hacked Facebook profile?
If you are not able to locate your Facebook account since the hacker has changed your email and phone number, you can try these instructions:
Go to https://www.facebook.com/login/identify or https://www.facebook.com/hacked so you can see the following screen on a computer:
Now, try to find your hacked Facebook account by searching for the following:
- Your email that was connected to your Facebook account
- Your phone number that was connected to your Facebook account
If neither of these options works, then you must do the following:
Ask a friend to go to your profile and click on the “About me” section and “Contact information.” Tell your friend to check if he/she can see any email or phone number under this section. If so, use this new email or phone number to search for your account.
If there is no email or phone number listed under your hacked Facebook account’s about me section, ask your friend to go to your profile once more on a computer and copy your Facebook URL. Here is an example of what a Facebook profile URL is:
Then try to add this full URL in the search bar for finding your account. If that doesn’t work, try to copy the last section of your profile URL like “jonasborchgrevink” from the image above and search for that.
11. Still Unable to recover your Facebook account?
If you cannot recover your Facebook account by following the instructions in this article, you may want to consider getting help from us. You’re probably experiencing Facebook’s cycle of death as described below:
The only options around this are included in our recovery session that you can order for $399 with a guaranteed $200 refund. Once ordered, you’ll receive a link to schedule a call with us on Skype. We will conduct a full security audit of your online accounts to ensure that you can’t be hacked again, and then we will do everything we can to recover your hacked account.
You’ll be able to re-schedule new calls with us, free of charge until your issue has been resolved. You’ll continue to receive free support and help from our team for one year.
After that, your Digital Protection Plan will be renewed at $99 yearly. The Digital Protection Plan can be canceled at any time. If we are unable to recover your account and you do not want continuing support from us, we will refund $200 and end your Digital Protection Plan.
Once you’ve recovered your Facebook account, you should follow our account security guide to keep it safe.
If you wonder why your Facebook account was hacked, you can learn more from this article.
12. If Everything Fails, Delete Your Hacked Facebook Account
If everything has failed and you are tired of a hacker having control of your Facebook account, you can consider having it deleted. There are two ways of doing that.
File an Impersonation Report to Facebook
- Go to Facebook’s “Report an Impostor Account” form here.
- Then click on “Someone created an account pretending to be me or a friend.”
- Under the question “Do you have a Facebook account,” click no.
- When Facebook asks you, “Is this account impersonating you?” click “Yes, I am the person being impersonated.”
- You need to fill in all the form details, like the name on the impostor profile, the URL of the hacked account, your full name, and your email. After that, you need to upload your ID to verify your identity. It must be a passport or a driver’s license.
See the options you need to choose in the image below:
Account Removal Request for a Medically Incapacitated Person
While this is not relevant to you, this is the last resort you can take to have your hacked Facebook account deleted. Since Facebook is not helping users that have been hacked, and since being hacked is such a harmful experience and can have real negative consequences, we do think it’s allowed to play Facebook by using this form. How you wish to fill this out is not something we want to guide you through, as it is legally in the gray area. But if everything else has failed, I would say: Go for it.
For more ways of removing profiles, images, and videos from Facebook, read this tutorial.
Facebook image by pixinoo from Shutterstock.com. This tutorial was created by William Worrall and Jonas Borchgrevink for Hacked.com.
