HACKED VS CLONED

In order to answer that question, you have to understand the meanings, the reasons, and the repercussions of each one. Then decide what you are willing to risk.

WHAT IS HACKING?

Hacking is when someone takes over your present Facebook account to use the information on it for their own gain. 




The hacker usually logs you out by immediately terminating your login session. Then he changes your password to one of his own, and sometimes even changes the login name, email or phone number so that no matter how many times you try to get back on, the login information won't work. Then he goes to work looking through your information to see what he can steal, especially the information that's set to ONLY ME or FRIENDS.



Although hackers are almost always on your friends list, sometimes they are complete strangers.  Looking from the outside of your account (as a non-friend), the hacker can only speculate what goodies you have on your account because he can't see any of the information set to ONLY ME or FRIENDS. 

But he is almost always a good guesser.

He doesn't choose his future hacks unwisely. He will have scoped out his mark - you -  by watching what you posted on your timeline and what kinds of things you share.  He is looking for survey takers, quiz takers, people who post huge game wins, who conduct public conversations with friends in the comments of posts, and who show their every move with check-in locations and times (which tells him when you are active on your account so he can determine a good time to begin your hack).  

He can also tell a good time to hack you by when you change your profile picture.

It is a Facebook glitch - and continues to be a glitch to this day - that when you change your profile picture, this is when your Facebook privacy settings are changed on your account - supposedly by accident.   It is in YOUR best interests to check your settings each and every time you change your profile picture so you are not caught unawares where your FRIENDS settings have been changed to PUBLIC or where your ONLY ME settings have been changed to FRIENDS or PUBLIC.  If your phone number is on your account, and you have it set to ONLY ME, it is a sure bet that it will be reset to FRIENDS OR PUBLIC.  No one will be more surprised than you because you know that you had it set to ONLY ME.

A word about your phone number ... the biggest lie Facebook tells is that they need your phone number to help you get back into your account if you should ever get locked out.  Far too many Facebook users provide it because they believe it.

It's not entirely true.

Facebook will use it to send you a text code to enter in the Password box so you can change your password in the event that you forgot it, lost it or got locked out of your account for some reason (usually their mistake).  But if you think about it, this is not the only method of contact for you.   If you put your email address on your account as your Recovery method, your phone number is not needed. Facebook will send you the code via email. If you list some trusted contacts, they will email a code to them for them to give to you so you can enter it in the Password box, and then be prompted to create a new password.  The trusted contacts method is the third party method - sort of like whispering down the lane. It takes a little longer but accomplishes the same result as sending you the code via email or texting the code to your phone. 

It is far too dangerous to put your phone number on ANY Social Media account because of the amount of hacking going on.  Even though Facebook says they want you to do it, they don't need it and they don't require it.  Put your email address on as the Recovery, choose some trusted contacts if you want to, but NEVER give them your phone number.

Now I want to tell you about what a hacker can do when he sees your phone number on your account.  Did you know your phone number can be compromised in less than 5 minutes?  

All a hacker has to do is replace your phone number on your Facebook account with a phone number in his surplus - he always has a surplus.  

He can also fix it so you can't use your phone at all, by looking up who your cell provider is, convincing them that your phone is lost or otherwise permanently damaged so they disconnect your number and he can get a new phone number assigned.   At that point, he will have another phone already in his possession waiting for the new phone number. He can do this very easily because you provided your family information on your Facebook account to answer the security questions of major utility companies and credit card/financial institutions.   If he chooses, he can use the new phone number as a new login for your account since he is now the new owner.   But the worst part is that he has now rendered the phone that's in your pocket totally useless.

If the hack is malicious in that the reason he wants your Facebook account is because you are on a high level in a particular game, (so he can BE you), he will also be keeping your identifying information in case he is ever called upon by Facebook to verify identity. 

If you already have it on your account, you have made it very easy for him. (City, state, phone number, work history, school history etc.). Your check-in locations also help him to zero in on exactly which Jane Doe you are, in case your city has several people with your name.




Last but not least, he will be looking for LIVE links to your family members listed in the relationship section of your account and work history and residence locations. This is so he can answer Facebook's security questions or create a new identity, or use your information to get new credit cards, bank accounts, and certain forms of government ID (driver's license, passport, etc.)  The last example alone can cause you grief by ruining your credit history and put you in financial ruin.




Once a hacker is inside a newly hacked account, if he doesn't find anything he can use, he will abandon the rest of the hack. That's why you see so many hacked accounts get returned to the owner so quickly after a hack.  There was nothing on the account that the hacker wanted, needed or could use. 




That doesn't mean the account won't get hacked again. It's been proven that 90% of hacked accounts are hacked again. A hacked account is never forgotten; it gets periodic checkups to see if the owner is updating their information, changing profile pictures, making game purchases, posting game wins, participating in surveys and/or quizzes, and allowing friend conversations to be on Public setting.  

WHO CAN POST ON MY TIMELINE?

This is another loophole on your Facebook settings that a hacker looks for.  If you have it set to FRIENDS or PUBLIC, this is another "in" to your account.  It gives the hacker promise that possibly the rest of your settings are very lax and/or your password is guessable.  

What this permission does on your end is that it allows anyone to post anything on your timeline. They can tag you in a post, attach your name to a sex video, scam tag you (Ray Ban, for example) and the worst part is - if you don't have TAG REVIEW or TIMELINE ACTIVITY set to where you have to approve any posts FIRST, these tags can sit there for years before you will ever notice someone tagged you. 

Plain and simple, you should NEVER allow anyone to post on your timeline.  The answer to the question should be NO ONE, with TAG REVIEW and TIMELINE ACTIVITY set to where you have to APPROVE FIRST.  

Anyone looking at your account will see that the STATUS BOX is removed from their view. They can't type on your timeline because there is no Status Box to type in.  Your answer of NO ONE disabled anyone from being able to leave you messages, tag you on new posts or embarrass you with scams or porn.  You can see it from your view, but no one else can.  You can still be tagged in a comment on your timeline but if you have Tag Review set to ON, you will be brought to your attention for approval or remove tag action.

While hackers are looking mostly for financial information in many cases.  The dead giveaway that gamers have it on their account is when they are posting frequent game wins.  A series of game wins is the reward for buying and a few are quite huge.  When players brag on their accounts, hackers know they have a short window of time to strike.




In the hacking business, time is of the essence. A good hacker doesn't need to keep your account very long if he is only after certain kinds of information. He will locate whatever he needs and be off your account in less than an hour.  

In that hour, the hacker can do a tremendous amount of damage. He can clean out your bank account and run up your credit cards, gather enough info to make new identities using your personal information and still have time to select a few people off your friends list to hack them when he found the same desired information on their accounts OR because they changed their profile picture which relaxes settings on their Facebook. 

It is a well known fact among hackers that changing your profile picture also changes some of the privacy settings on your account. This is why we always advise to go over your settings right after changing a profile picture. 


Regarding hacked accounts, we always tell you to unfriend any friend who has been hacked because, as a name on their friends list, you can be on the hacker's radar very quickly. 

If you have a catchy name, if you expose your friends list to PUBLIC, if you post many game wins, if you change your profile picture frequently or if you have your timeline posts set to PUBLIC, very quickly you can be on the hacker's radar as his next choice.  It is VERY important to Unfriend so that you are not next in line to be hacked. 




When accounts are hacked, there is no rhyme or reason. It can be very high level Game players OR very low level Game players or even Non Gamers who are hacked.  It depends on the hacker's preference and exactly what he is looking for.



As a low level player, you may be hacked because you don't have many friends yet or your Facebook account might be new.  A hacker can masquerade as you, sending friend requests, playing the game and enjoying the wins that lower level players are given by developers.  Low level players win more when they start to play a game than they do when they are in middle levels. Higher level players win a lot more because the developer is moving them into being one of their "stars."  

The hacker can hold on to a low level player's account for a very long time without it being reclaimed by owner, or caught by Facebook.  But, once the heat is on, they abandon the account.  The player should have a facilitator - someone to help them get their account back and it should be within the first 24 hours, but not longer than 3 days.  The fact that the hacker changed the password doesn't mean the account is lost. A good facilitator can have the account back in 10 minutes.   

If you are a higher level player who posts a lot of wins, then you obviously buy game coins.  Besides gaining access to your financial and identity information, then second reason the hacker wants your Facebook account is because you are well established in the gaming community, and he can enjoy the higher wins and daily bonuses that you get - he can BE You.  He doesn't have to work to get to the high game levels - he can steal it. 

A hacker will nearly always be a friend already on the hacked account's friends list. While he sits on your friends list, he will be constantly on the lookout for more of your friends that will fill his needs. 





You might get mad at losing all your friends when they unfriend you. It is a good thing for them, but it isn't always good for you.  Sure, it is time consuming to go to the trouble of re-friending them - if and when you get your account back.   If that is the least of your problems after getting hacked, you should count yourself lucky to have your account back.

If you don't change your settings after being hacked, you will get hacked again.  Soon.  Count on it.


WHAT IS CLONING?

Cloning is when a brand new Facebook account is created in your name, using all or most of the information and photos that you allowed to be seen on your account  - in Friends view or Public view, on timeline or info you shared with 3rd party APPs (like surveys, quizzes, and sites that promise free game coins). 

In this case, you don't lose your present account; there is another YOU on Facebook.



Cloned Facebook accounts are more of a nuisance than anything. They will usually friend up your friends, telling them that they are You, to gain the trust of your friends.





It is important to IMMEDIATELY report the Cloned account to Facebook as soon as you are aware that someone is impersonating you.   Then go to your timeline, make a post set to PUBLIC, and put up the link to the Cloned account to let your friends know exactly who is impersonating you.  The sooner you warn your friends, the sooner the cloned account is rendered useless. 




If a Cloned account confines their activities to Facebook, and doesn't extend to the world at large, then this type of Cloning is more of a nuisance than a danger.  But if they were able to Clone your information to the point of opening credit cards and buying goods online, that is a Malicious Cloning which has its own set of repercussions.  They have moved into Hacking.

SO, WHAT'S WORSE?

Cloned accounts are definitely the lesser of the two evils. 

It is easier to get positive reaction from Facebook after reporting them because there are more reporting options for Cloned accounts than there are for Hacked accounts. 

Facebook disables the Cloned account until the person on the Cloned account can prove their identity.  

In the meantime, you are also asked to prove your identity to Facebook so Facebook can play King Solomon to decide which one  of you is the real mother of the baby. lol

PROVING YOUR IDENTITY 

Sometimes Cloned accounts can prove identity easier and faster than you can prove that you are the owner. That's because of the amount of information you allow to be seen in Friend and Public view on your account.  

If you have named your family members - with or without live links to their Facebook accounts - all the Cloned user has to do is answer the same type of family questions that most places use for security measures.  They are:

1) What is your mother's name?

2) Who is your current employer?

3) What is your brother's name?

4) Which family member lives in (city) in (state),

5) What family function photos did you post on your timeline in the last 3 months?  

  

It's a stupid test, and no way is it definitive in proving identity BUT if you have all that info on your account, the Cloned account has no problem proving to Facebook that they are You.

In the past, Facebook used to ask for two forms of photo ID - usually a driver's license and some government-recognized ID - so they knew it was you. The name and face had to match on both ID's.  But they got away from doing that because alot of people were perfectly OK with letting their accounts go lost and unrecovered because they didn't want to provide their identifying information to Facebook.  They felt it was an invasion of their privacy and they didn't trust Facebook not to bomb them with junk mail, phone calls, and worse.  

Then Facebook decided to use a Facial Recognition test. This is where they have you match names to five photos of five people on your friends list, but they didn't do this by showing you their profile pictures. That would be too easy.

They pick five of your friends, then they went to their photo albums and picked out five pictures from each one for a total of 25 pictures.  They usually pick the five friends who have tons of pictures in their albums that are set to Friends view. 


The five pictures are chosen from any of the hundreds of Facebook photos in their albums.  And the more obscure the pictures, the better.


Then they show you a screen of 5 pictures with a multiple choice of 5 names under the set. Your job is to select ONE name that all five pictures belong to.  It is a timed test.  You have 10 to 15 seconds to provide correct answers for each set of five, for a total of 55 to 60 seconds for the whole test.    

That's pretty hard to do if you aren't someone who looks through the photo albums of your friends.  

The test is equally hard to do because you can't spend much time on each one.  You can't use your own Facebook account to look up anyone's pictures because it is disabled.  




Even if you have help from a kind friend or if you are using two or more devices that have other Facebook accounts on them to look up the photo albums of each one of the 5 multiple choice names, there just isn't enough time to get back to pick an answer before the question times out.  

The killer is the Time Outs.  Once you take too long to make a guess or are using another device to research the owner of One set of pictures, it will piss you off when you come back to the test to put your answer in and find that the test moved on to the next set of pictures. There is no back button.  

There are also two SKIP buttons on the first run through of the test. If you use one SKIP on the first run through, and if you get the other 4 answers correct, you have passed the test. They will slap you on the wrist and tell you to review Facebook's Terms of Service. Then they will show you the login screen. 



The graciousness is only for the first run through and after that, you can use the SKIPs for the second run through. Even if you got the other 4 answers correct, the SKIP makes you fail the test.  The SKIPS are disabled by the third run through, so you have to get all the answers right.  

You get 4 attempts in one hour. After the second run through, in order to pass the test, you have to get all 5 profile names correctly matched to each set of pictures.  

If you exhaust your 4 attempts in the first hour, you have to wait another 4 hours before Facebook will let you have another crack at it. 



If you try to login because you are hoping to get the test offered before the 4 hours expires, each time you try to login before the 4 hours is up, you will be shown a popup telling you how much time is left before you can try the test again. 

It doesn't do any good to look up the pictures while you are waiting for the 4 hours to pass. 

They use one set of pictures for Attempts One and Two in the first hour and they use another set of pictures for Attempts Three and Four in the first hour.  

If you didn't get them right, after you have waited 4 hours to try again, the new test will give you one set of pictures for Attempt One that you have seen before and a brand new set of pictures for Attempts 2, 3, and 4.  You have one more hour to get them right, then you have to wait another 4 hours to try again.   This goes on for 24 hours or until you get them right.

If you fail after 24 hours, you will again be given the option to provide photo ID.  If you don't, you will get two more days of the above test to identify your friends and then you will get locked out for 30 days with a message that says your account has been disabled until you provide proof of identity.  

In essence, this is Facebook jail - depriving you from using your account because of some real or imagined infraction.

Here's the solution:

Let your account sit idle, and don't login or attempt to login for 30 days. On the 31st day, go to login screen, provide your login information with the wrong password.  The screen will tell you the password is wrong - click FORGOT PASSWORD.  You will be asked if you want to change your password. They will send you a link so make sure the info they show you actually is your own email or phone.  Click the link to reset password, the link takes you back to login, change the password, and you are back on your account again.  It doesn't work before 30 days time. 

Keep in mind that a Cloned account takes everything that you allowed to be seen on your Facebook, including your photographs, your information, your relatives (if named on your account), your location, your phone number, your email, and your friends list.  



If you didn't allow identifying information to be seen on your own account, then the Cloned account would have nothing to use, saying that they are You.




At the same time that the Cloned account is asked for proof of identity, you also have to prove your identity. 


You may also have to do a Facial Recognition test as the Cloned account had to do.  


If the IP address that the Cloned account is using doesn't match the location that's provided on the submitted driver's license, Facebook will then check the location of the last 30 days of logins on the reporting person's history to see if there is a duplicate.


Hopefully You were quick to report the Cloned account as the fake before the Cloned account reported You as the fake.  Get some friends to report them too - the more reports, the better.


Even if the Cloned account passes the Facial Recognition test and provides authentic driver's license or government ID, the Cloned account is the loser here ONLY IF you have enough friends reporting the account as the fake.



Hacked accounts are not as easy to get shut down after reporting them because Facebook doesn't take such reports seriously until there are at least 5 reports with the same complaint. To that end, Facebook made it even harder when they removed the "This Person Is A Hacker" option on the reporting screen. It is possible that too many reporters were abusing the privilege.




All in all, if you have to choose one, Cloning is better than being hacked. 
 

You can always get someone to stop being You on social media. 

You can rarely get a Hacker to stop cleaning out your bank account or running up credit cards that they opened in your name.