I’ve talked to you before about scammers who will clone your Facebook account. That means they make an account using your name and your photo and send friend requests to your friends. Sometimes, they’ll also send messages pretending to be you.
If you’ve been cloned, scammers have not actually gotten into your account. One sure sign that your account hasn’t been hacked is that the scammers are sending friend requests to people who are already your friends on Facebook. You can’t send friend requests to current friends.
But recently, the Messenger accounts of several of my friends were compromised by scammers sending links like the one shown below. One way that I knew this was a hack and not some creep who cloned the account was that the message showed up in the active message thread between myself and the person whose Messenger was compromised.
One way you can tell if your Messenger has actually been compromised is to open it. If scammers have sent messages using your account, you’ll see them there.
How did scammers get access to your Messenger? It’s possible you downloaded some type of malware or that some automated program (sometimes called a ‘bot’) simply guessed your password. Immediately change your password if you are able to access the account.
It’s also a good time to run a malware scan on your computer, tablet, or phone.
Great tip, not sure how much of this is ‘common knowledge’ but good to keep in mind.