Our facebook page was Hacked!
On the 24th of Jan at about 9pm whilst chatting to a friend I received a popup message saying my account had been disabled for violation of Facebooks terms of service. Totally confused as to what rules I had broken, I appealed the decision, provided ID and assumed it would be fixed when I woke up the following morning. The next morning I woke to the same message, so I began trying to contact facebook. Some 8 hours later I had logged several help requests which were immediately closed by facebook without response. By this stage, the panic and fear had set in as the possibility of losing my facebook page forever was sinking in.2 days after the hacking Jaiden and I went to the local markets to do some shopping only to be unable to take out money from an ATM. My heart sank thinking he ATM had just skimmed my card, so I hopped onto my internet banking only to see my bank balance was at $0 and there were several Paypal purchases on Facebook that I had not made. By now I was in full blown panic mode as I realised I now have no access to money at all, hardly any food, and because I use facebook to keep in touch with people, I had lost contact with everybody. After much investigation I discovered that my facebook was hacked which gave the hackers access to my Paypal account as it’s linked to Facebook business. From there they scheduled payments to themselves, before posting “adult content” on my profile which was designed to see my account banned, whilst the scheduled payments emptied my bank account over 2 days.Over the coming days and weeks, I endured an emotional rollercoaster as each day my account would count down how many days until it was banned forever, meaning the public page would be deleted too, not to mention fighting with the bank, facebook and paypal to be reimbursed for the money that was stolen. I spent hours on end, day after day trying every conceivable method to get my page back, to no avail. It became clear the ban I had incurred was one that was unlikely to ever be reviewed, and I accepted the page was gone. Finally, with 1 day left until it was banned I received a different message, one that said I had been hacked and if I could verify my ID, it would be reinstated. Tears streamed down my face as I finally had some hope, but several hours later my heart broke once again as despite doing the verification process, I was taken back to the same message I had seen for the past month. The following day, my original profile, and our public page, and all it’s content was deleted forever.
It may seem like a silly thing to be upset about, but the page really meant a lot to me. It was how I found my authentic voice and was the means for discovering my talent for writing. It opened up new dreams and possibilities as I discovered these new talents. The part I have grieved the most was accepting that 10 years of connections were essentially gone. Because I used the public page inbox to keep in contact with people, every conversation and connection I have ever made ( literally thousands) are long gone. These people, you people that are reading this, many of you I have never met, have been the ones who have given me the support and drive to keep going during the tough times. Being that I very rarely have friends of family close by, the encouragement from our followers felt like my tribe, a tribe that spread far and wide, from many different backgrounds, but all of them were there to support Jaiden and I during the good times, and the bad.This has been a very hard time for me personally, as a big part of me has been torn away and honestly the thought of rebuilding is an overwhelming one. But, I am not going to give up, and day by day we’re going to work to re-create the beautiful community of people that we once had sharing our adventures. If you know of somebody who followed our page, please tag them below, or share this post. It’s been a demoralising time, but we will not only rebuild, we’re going to come back bigger, better and more committed to our goals than ever.Much loveCam and Jaiden
