For years, dozens of people have contacted our NBC Responds teams across the country, claiming their social media accounts had been compromised.
Victims said they reported the issue to Facebook, but there was no way to recover their accounts. This is a new twist that makes an Algonquin woman fear for her own physical safety.
Susan Balmer told NBC 5 Responds she hasn’t used Facebook much since it was hacked about 10 months ago.
Balmer said she reported the hack to Facebook. When the company didn’t help her get her old account back, she created a new one and moved on, until last April.
“It was around 11 p.m. when a friend of mine texted me and said, ‘Hey Sue, I think you put the Taylor Swift posts posted in the wrong market group,’ and I I read it and I was like, “What are you talking about?” “, Balmer told NBC Chicago.
Whoever controlled Balmer’s old Facebook account was posing as Balmer and posting ads for Taylor Swift tickets in local Facebook groups.
Even though Balmer flagged these messages as fraudulent, they continued to appear.
A few weeks later, the scam spread from the virtual world to Susan’s home.
“I think it was a Sunday afternoon, and my husband and I were in the family room and there was a knock on the door,” Balmer said.
She opened the door and was greeted by a stranger who stared back at her.
This stranger was Erica Freund.
“I thought maybe it would scare him if I was at the front door. Like, “Hey, can I have a ticket, please?” ” said Freund.
Freund had responded to the Facebook ad posted by Balmer’s impostor and used a payment app to send $1,000 for two Taylor Swift tickets, hoping to take his daughter to the concert.
Freund said she and the seller — who she believed to be Balmer — agreed on a public location to meet so she could pick up the tickets and chose an IHOP parking lot in Crystal Lake.
According to Freund, no one ever showed up at the meeting location and she decided to Google the seller’s name.
“So I just thought, well, I’ll look up her address online and see if I find it, and it came up on Google and I was like, ‘Well, maybe I could just go there -down and talk to him,’” Freund said.
When the women realized what had happened, they reported the fraud to the Algonquin Village Police Department, Facebook and Freund Bank.
“They basically all told me, ‘You’ve been scammed and that’s too bad,'” Freund said.
According to Balmer, she never received a response from Facebook and the hacker continues to post about fake Taylor Swift concert tickets.
NBC 5 Responds contacted Facebook several times to ask if it could remove Balmer’s compromised page. The social media company never responded to our emails.
We also contacted Freund’s bank, Chase, which had previously closed his fraud report without helping him.
After Chase heard NBC 5 Responds, he reopened the case and refunded her $1,000. Chase Bank told NBC Chicago in part: “Fortunately, we were able to recover the funds from the receiving bank, which is very rare. »
How to prevent a social media hack
According to the Yale University Cybersecurity Lab, there are several ways to prevent a social media hack.
- Use strong passwords and choose a different password for each of your accounts.
- Change your passwords if you participated in a data breach.
- Use two-factor authentication.
- And make sure the contacts you list for your second form of identification, like your phone number and email address, are up to date.
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