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Ask HN: Facebook Business Manager hacked and now locked out of accounts

27 points by fantalamera ↗ HN
Sorry in advance, but it's my turn for HN big tech support.

Our Meta/Facebook Business Manager account was hacked July 12, despite having 2FA. The hackers got away with spending $800k on scam ads and got our business manager & all ad accounts blocked.

We’re an adtech business and are losing tens of thousands in revenue per day until our ad accounts are re-instated. We have several open tickets with Meta/Facebook but not getting in contact with anyone who seems to be able to help. Almost 2 weeks later and still no update.

Anyone at Meta/FB that can help or point us in the right direction?

Thanks in advance

23 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 68.9 ms ] thread
ilamont
You don't have an account manager? You can't freeze the payment method?
fantalamera
We have spoken with several account managers, but they’ve ”forwarded the ticket to another team and can’t do anything more”

The hackers are currently thrown out, so we’re not losing tens of thousands in revenue daily because they are spending it, but rather because the account is blocked we can’t run campaigns on behalf of our customers.

gaws
> we’re not losing tens of thousands in revenue daily because they are spending it, but rather because the account is blocked we can’t run campaigns on behalf of our customers.

Imagine centralizing your entire business, your employees' livelihoods, on a demonstrably terrible platform like Facebook.

mcraiha
Did they bypass/disable 2FA or did they get the code somehow?
suitcase
They probably stole the cookie from an active session via malware
steve-222
How was your 2FA method compromised? Until you're able to fix that, re-instating your account might mean another round of hundreds of thousands of dollars in scam ads on your behalf.
yieldcrv
Was your 2FA just coming as a text message to your phone?
radiojasper
Ah yeah the good ol "we're losing tens of thousands a day". If you really make such money, you also should be able to afford a legal department.
joshstrange
See if your state has a Social Media liaison position/role, or even specifically a FB/IG liaison. I had no clue this was a thing until a relative's business IG account was hacked. No amount of screaming/begging or filling out all the forms helped, the liaison had her account restored in under a day.
solardev
What? Which states DO have this? Never heard of this until just now.
lrvick
Your centralized exploitative adtech business that exists at the expense of the well being of society is failing because another bigger centralized exploitative adtech business will not care about your well being?

Now you want a tech worker community who is among the people you track and exploit to help you get back to doing that.

I suggest you take this as an opportunity to seek out a living producing something that has a chance of being actually positive for society.

Volker_W
Seeing this comment in the #1 spot makes me proud of the HN community.
throwaway67743
And yet agreeing with a concise "get fucked" version results in downvotes, sadge
radiojasper
the "this" is what got you the downvotes, not the agreeing with. Because when you say "this", you also could've just upvoted.
throwaway67743
You say that, but upvote seems to have disappeared, re shadow banning thread.

This is why shadow banning is just stupid, deal with confrontation and ban properly or not at all - that is ignoring all of the other people it affects, I share an IP with 1000s of people, it could be them or it could be me, who knows because there is no feedback.

I do find it pretty funny that this needs to be explained to a HN audience, but then it's verging on a tech support forum with all the Facebook and Apple woe is me....

Interesting, it does intermittently appear, perhaps ad blocking is filtering it, also maybe js disabled might be related.

radiojasper
that's just a JS thing. Shadow banning is a term coiled by people who don't understand that their content just doesn't gain any traction.
throwaway67743
That is patently untrue, through - yes many people do confuse those, but shadow banning (stupid term but it is what it is) is a real thing - case in point I signed up for a twitch account (don't ask) and it appears because I signed up from a shared ip address (cgnat, 1000s of people) my chat shows sent in my browser but never appears - that is shadow banning and it is extremely cowardly.

(Proven with streams that show chat, also never informs my followers that I'm online, does not show in the online list on their side)

przeor
I got similar situation with Twillio and we got fast response and full refund. Just saying :-)
eurasiantiger
Sincerely, I hope your product fails and your company goes under. Screw adtech and screw your investors.