Ask HN: A scammer claimed ownership of my Facebook page. How do I get it back?
5 points| metalised | 4 years ago
As a follow-up to [0], after several unsuccessful attempts to restore my rights and ownership to the page, the scammer recently reasserted their claim to my page: see screenshot [1]. Meanwhile, it's been over a month, and facebook has not responded to my numerous messages, and I doubt any human will ever see those messages anyway.
I don't know how the scammers did it, but I assume either my personal credentials were hacked (I have since updated all relevant passwords), or, more likely, it was something along the lines of [2]: i.e. they created a dummy entity and then claimed that my page was a duplicate of their business. Which means that, even though it would be instantly obvious to any human moderator checking the page's history and contents (e.g.from [3]), that the scammer's ownership claim is unfounded, since my page is not, and was never backed by a commercial business entity, whatever useless 'proof' they offered as a business will likely still pass Facebook's automated processes for ownership claims.
It seems the scammers have now moved to phase two of their scam. An account misleadingly named 'Facebook Verifications' recently sent me this message on facebook, along with a list of other facebook pages that were presumably also scammed (in which I recognise other famous names in the heavy metal scene, e.g. Richard Henshall from Haken) [4][5][6].
Also, a random etsy shop's facebook page supposedly selling earings has linked to their 'metalised' earrings, nonsensically linking to my page (presumably because of its large readership), though this may be an unrelated stunt [7].
I'm reaching out to the HN community. If anyone has any ideas how I could fight the scammers and get my page back, please help a metalhead out!
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29706571
[1] https://i.stack.imgur.com/yuWvu.jpg
[2] https://www.techprevue.com/how-to-claim-a-facebook-page/
[3] https://i.stack.imgur.com/5ux4s.png
[4] https://i.stack.imgur.com/spwK2.jpg
[5] https://i.stack.imgur.com/LPw59.jpg
[6] https://i.stack.imgur.com/X8xpg.jpg
[7] https://www.facebook.com/mumzele.lilly/photos/pcb.3075592826045948/3076311139307450
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