It’s happened to yet another Bay Area viewer. An East Bay woman tried to log into her Facebook account only to find a hacker had taken control and was scamming her friends. Facebook and its parent company Meta provided no help to kick the scammer out — that is, until she agreed to pay for their help.
Facebook and Instagram users have long complained it’s nearly impossible to recover stolen accounts. There’s no customer service phone number to call. The online help pages send them in circles. This woman became so frustrated she marched down to Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park and banged on the door. Still no help – until she agreed to buy a subscription for customer service.
Tova Ridgway of Antioch recalls how she was tricked into giving a hacker control of her Facebook page.
“I thought I was talking to my stepmother. It wasn’t. It was the hacker,” Tova Ridgway said. “It was insane.”
The hacker changed the email and password to Ridgway’s account, then pretended to be Ridgway.
“Sending messages to all of my friends such as, ‘I need money,’ or ‘Can you do me a favor?'” she said.