What to Do When a Friend’s Facebook Account is Hacked or Duped

What is a cloned Facebook account?

Facebook account cloning is a simple scam that has been around for years. In short, a scammer uses one of your online accounts to obtain publicly available information about you. They then use the information found on your profile page (ie, your profile photo, cover photo, date of birth, biography, school, or employment information) to create a new account in your name.

They will use this account to trick your friends into giving out their personal information, following malicious links and participating in other scams. For example, scammers may ask a friend of yours to send you money to help you in a serious situation. While a person usually doesn't send money to a stranger right away, he may do so without thinking if he thinks you (his friend) are in trouble.

How to recognize the cloning of a Facebook account

Strictly speaking, Facebook account cloning is not a hack, but a trick that smart scammers use to breach social media accounts. A cloned account is a copy of your account that uses information from your Facebook page.

If a scammer spends a lot of time and effort duplicating your or your friend's account, it can be difficult for other users to spot you right away. However, you can use a sure sign to recognize a cloned account and inform the real owner of the account about it. This sign is a duplicate friend request.

If you or your friends start getting duplicate friend requests from someone you already have on your friends list, it's a clear sign of a cloned Facebook account. On Facebook, if you've already sent someone a friend request, you can't send another one, as there's no such option on the platform. So if you get a friend request from someone who you're sure is already on your friends list, you can safely assume there's a scammer behind it.

What to do when a friend's Facebook account is hacked or cheated

When you suspect someone made a copy of your friend's Facebook account, here are the things you should do right away.

Find the real account owner

When you get a new friend request from someone who's already on your friends list, there's still a chance that it's a real person who created a second account. Before reporting this account to Facebook, find the actual owner of the account and ask about the duplicate.

Open Facebook and use the search function (top left corner of the screen) to find the original Facebook profile that you suspect is a duplicate. You can also find the original account in your Facebook friends list.

If the account owner created a new Facebook profile, they probably announced it on their original page. If you don't see such an ad on their page, select Message and ask them about the second profile directly in Facebook Messenger. If they don't know about the second account, let them know about cloning Facebook accounts and that someone could be using their personal information without permission.

Report a hacked or duplicate account on Facebook

Facebook has an algorithm that allows you to report an account that you think is fake. Once you're sure the account you're viewing is fake, follow the steps below to report a fake account on Facebook. The instructions differ depending on the device you are using.

Follow the steps below to report a cheated or hacked Facebook account on the web, please follow the steps below.

• Open Facebook on your desktop.
• Go to the account you want to report and open their profile page.
• Select More (the three horizontal dots in the upper right corner) > Find support or report.
• From the Report menu, select one of the reasons: pretend to be someone, fake account, fake name, or something else.
• Follow the steps below to report a Facebook account on the mobile app.
• Open Facebook on your smartphone and navigate to the account you want to report.
• On your profile page, select More > Report Profile.
• Under Select a problem, select the reason for reporting the account.

Follow the instructions and give Facebook all the required details. Then select Send or Send.

You can also report a hacked account on Facebook using the link facebook.com/hacked. Simply follow the on-screen instructions to give Facebook an overview of your situation and report suspicious activity. If the cloned account has blocked you, you can ask your friends on Facebook to follow the same procedure and report it to Facebook.

You can report someone pretending to be you or your friend even if they don't have a Facebook profile (or don't have access to your Facebook profile at this time).

How to protect your friends (and yourself) from hackers

There are various techniques that a Facebook user can employ to protect their account from hackers. If you want to prevent your friend's account from being compromised or duplicated, share the following privacy and security tips with them.

Hide your Facebook friends list

After a hacker creates a duplicate of your Facebook account, they will start targeting people on your friends list and send them fake friend requests. To prevent that, you can simply hide your Facebook friends list from other users.

To do that, go to your Facebook account settings and follow the path Settings > Privacy > How people can find and contact you > Who can see your friends list? On the right side, select Edit and choose one of the options from the dropdown menu. If you want your friends list to be private, select Only me.

Make your Facebook account private

After making your Facebook friends list private, you can go one step further and make your entire Facebook account private. You can do this in the privacy settings of your account.

Check your Facebook security settings

Even if you think you have a strong password on Facebook, that's not always enough to protect you from hackers. To be on the safe side, we recommend reviewing your Facebook account's security settings.

You can configure additional security measures in the Security & Login section, such as enabling alerts for unrecognized logins and two-factor authentication.

When you turn on two-factor authentication, Facebook will send a text message with a unique code to your phone number every time there is a login attempt from an unrecognized device. This makes it much more difficult for hackers to access your Facebook account.

Whats Next?

When you find out that your friend's Facebook account was compromised or duplicated, the most important thing to do is to report it to Facebook as soon as possible. After that, you can tell your other Facebook friends about the duplicate so they can report it as fake too.

Creating fake or duplicate accounts is against Facebook guidelines and we take these reports seriously. If Facebook receives multiple reports about the same account, they will likely act quickly and remove the fake account before any damage is done.