Here's one of those things that we don't want to think about and that we think could never happen to us , and I am just going to be honest and say that it happens to way too many people , unfortunately , and so this video is really to help you protect your brand .
And the reason that I'm saying this is because in the year 2000 , no , not 2000 , 2020 , in the year 2020 , I got hacked . It was a mess From like October 2020 , I want to say through December of 2020 , multiple things happened .
First of all , all my passwords were the same , all of them , all of them and the first thing that I noticed happened was my ad account , all my clients' ad accounts basically all got shut down because somebody had hacked into my Facebook account and added to all my clients' accounts .
Thank God , I didn't spend this , but $1,200 a day , and it was some crazy , weird video that was put up and basically what Facebook saw was oh , this is inappropriate , so let's shut all these ad accounts down .
They also have never spent this kind of money , so this just looks off , and so Facebook did it as a protection to me , although it took me seven days to get everything back , but these things can happen , and so through that experience , I learned number one the thought this will never happen to me , can't happen to me , and as a business owner , a CEO , an
entrepreneur , it is my job to protect the assets that I have , meaning unless I'm hiring an IT company . Nobody else is doing this for me . And then , after that , they also broke into my Gmail account , my business suite account .
They hid all of my banking information , so it was going to this other folder that I didn't know about , and so what they were trying to do is break into my PayPal . They were trying to break into my banking account information , so it was a mess , and basically what I learned through this situation is number one the thought this will never happen to me .
Don't know what your passwords are like . Seriously , if you know what they are , they're gonna be able to figure them out . But number two it's being vigilant , and it is my job as a business owner To protect not only myself , but my clients , right and my anything that I have access to .
And the reason I wanted to talk about this Today is because so many of my clients myself Clients that I'm connected to in their Facebook account are getting tons of messages Saying and they look like they're from business suite , they're in your messenger inbox , they look like they're from meta , they look like they're from a security team , and these are not real .
They have a link in them for you to click , because what happens is they get access to your account and that is how you lose your account , and right now , as far as business pages go , you cannot get verified on the blue unless you're already verified . But you can't , like pay for that verification and so therefore , where is the protection Right ?
This is also where they can control everything again your ads and all of that stuff . Obviously , be vigilant when it comes to your personal , professional account too , but this is again , it's part of our job as a business owner to protect ourselves , even though we don't own social media . That is our Profile right . That is how people are finding us .
That's how we're using a lot of our profile to market .
It is our responsibility and it sucks being grown up and an adult sometimes and having to deal with this stuff , but when we are cautious and when we are paying attention to these things and not just , like I used , to freak out when I got these Kind of things and we click on the link immediately just to figure out what's happening .
That is not what you do . Number one Facebook is not gonna send you a message through messenger unless you've already had a conversation going with them through messenger , especially to tell you that your account is shut down to , especially to tell you you violated something . You're not gonna get a messenger message . Typically , you get an email .
However , there are scammers that can also go through email . So my best advice is to never click any link when it comes to email or In your messenger inbox , but to go actually to your own like type Facebook comm , right , and go look .
Or , if you're checking your Add account out , go business dot Facebook comm , check it out and see what you see with your own two eyes . Right , not clicking on a link that's gonna send you blinding somewhere where you could be logging in and they could get access to your information .
The other thing that you can do is Facebook and Instagram both do this and they have a security center where you can go and see did this really come from Facebook ?
Most of the time , it's no , and you'll be like , well , I've got all these emails or I've got all these messages and there's nothing that says this is from Facebook , and so that's two great ways to check these things out , right , but we get to be vigilant because I am seeing like hackers and spammers like coming out in droves right now and again .
This is not to be doom and gloom . This is so that you can be prepared and not automatically be fearful when you see these things come up and think that you need to Click on the link . I'm trying to protect you from doing that . So If we get a link in our messenger , are we clicking it ? No , we are not clicking it . It is most likely spam .
There's also groups that now tag you and they look like their official meta . I keep reporting them . I don't know why meta's not taken down faster , but it's driving me crazy .
But they're using the logo , they're using all of these things , and so they tag you and then you freak out because you're like , oh my gosh , I'm in violation of something and you're not . I just remove the tag , delete the notification , report the group , report the page and move on . A lot of the emails that I get that are not real .
They also , if you look and see , when you look at the actual email address , when you go up to the subject , it's like a Salesforce email or some other . It's not even Facebook , but they can still fake it and make it look like it actually is from Facebook . So , again , you just get to be vigilant . Make sure you have super tight passwords .
You have two factor authentication on every platform that you can actually get it on . It will save you in the long run . Yes , it's an extra step and they send a text to your phone . But I'm telling you , do not play around with this stuff , especially if you've built a really good following .
Okay , because even doing all these things , you can still get it taken away . Go to Facebook , gel all these things . But I'm trying to help you . Just protect yourself from these scammers . We're not clicking on links and if we get an email , we are going to go to our actual Facebook account and not click any links from the actual email , okay .
So this is to protect you , this is to protect your brand . This is part of being a business owner . It's a sucky part of being a business owner , but no one else is doing this for us , unless we're paying somebody else to do it .
So we get to be vigilant about this ourselves and make sure that we are protecting ourselves wherever possible when it comes to our platforms .