As many of you know, I was headed into the hospital on the morning of Monday, September 21st for my membrane sweep procedure. The purpose of the procedure is to (hopefully) naturally induce labor in the coming days. I posted an update to my Instagram stories letting everyone know that I was headed into the doctor’s office later that morning, and then as most of you are probably aware…radio silence.
Before I tell you the story of what happened, let’s start with what is most important. Liam is happy, healthy, and the love of our lives. No matter what happened with the accounts, our baby boy has made his grand entrance into the world and we couldn’t be happier. I will be sharing SO many pictures and stories about Liam soon, so make sure you’re following @lauraelizabethgraham on Instagram for all things baby Liam!
Now back to the story. That same Monday morning I began to receive emails to my inboxes indicating suspicious activity on my accounts. I have multiple social media accounts and many different email addresses, so I quickly began to make recommended changes. Unfortunately the hackers quickly accessed my Facebook and verified themselves using one of my email accounts. At that point they created new ad accounts on my business Facebook profile, used my saved credit card to purchase some Facebook ads, and then posted something (that I was never able to see) that was in violation of the Facebook Community Guidelines. I received a notification letting me know that a post that I (the hackers) had made had violated community standards and that my accounts were being disabled. The notice gave me the option of appealing the community violation, so naturally I clicked to put in an appeal.
It’s worth noting that Facebook and Instagram have no live/human support. All support related requests are fielded via pre-existing forms. There are tons and TONS of forms! The community violation appeal did not allow me to include any information actually indicating that my accounts had been hacked or taken over, so when it came to reviewing the violation, they simply looked at the post that clearly went against standards and essentially said, “Yes, this is a violation. The review is final.” Because my accounts were disabled and the the appeal had been reviewed, I could no longer submit any other support forms/appeals to initiate further review of my accounts. My Instagram account is linked to my personal and business Facebook accounts, so everything was taken down at once.
So that’s it then, right? I was locked out, unable to submit appeals, and unable to contact Facebook or Instagram in any way. My husband reached out to both organizations through his own social media, but let’s be honest, Facebook and Instagram have billions of users. They also probably have hundreds if not thousands of accounts that are hijacked every single day. It’s also worth noting that while we are working through all of this, my water broke and I was admitted to the hospital. My labor was 16 hours long, so Luke and I spent the majority of the time trying to think of ways to get through to Facebook.
I had brands and client partners emailing me and asking about outstanding contracts and deliverables. I was having to respond telling them that I had been hacked, had no way of fulfilling contract deliverables, no platform at all…
Liam was born Tuesday (the 22nd) at 6:20am. He was healthy, beautiful, and perfect. We were discharged from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, and were able to settle into our home with Liam later that evening. We had continued to research similar situations until this point in time, but no case that we came across was quite the same (as far as being unable to submit appeals). That evening we scheduled a call with an IT consultant that was a friend of the family for the next morning.
We woke up Thursday morning and had the call with the consultant. His advice? (1) Lock everything–that we still have–down. Install a password manager, setup 2-factor authentication for everything, etc. (2) Start contacting anyone and everyone we know to try and connect with individuals inside Facebook and Instagram.
Luke, my sister-in-law Olivia, my parents, friends, and even many strangers began to drum up leads over the next 12 hours.
Thankfully, within hours an internal case was created at Facebook, giving us hope that it would be resolved. By Tuesday, we had friends calling us saying that my Instagram profile was visible to them again, and I was logged back in by Tuesday night. We are SO thankful that this was resolved. As I mentioned, all that matters is that Liam was born and we were both doing great after his birth, but Instagram and this blog is a business that I have worked so hard to build for years. It is a main source of income for our little family, and it was scary to have such a huge unknown while we brought our son into the world.
If you want more details about what happened and how you can protect yourself from cyber attacks in the future, visit my Instagram profile and watch the “HACKED” highlight bubble. Thank you so much for being here and supporting us always!
If this same situation has happened to you, I am so sorry for the stress and worry you experienced!
While we were able to get our situation resolved through contacts of contacts, we ARE NOT able or allowed to give out the names or information of anyone who helped on our case.
As I mentioned above, the key is to get an internal case created if your forms are not being processed. Use your personal network to see if anyone you may know knows someone within Facebook or Instagram to get a case created for you. You may be surprised at who you may know!
xoxo,
Laura Elizabeth
