A Louth businesswoman is at her “wits end” after her Facebook profile was hacked and used to extort others in online scams.

Nutritionist Grainne Fox told Lunchtime Live that not only was she hacked but her “identity was stolen”.

Hackers managed to access Ms Fox’s business and personal accounts almost two months ago.

Ms Fox said she got quite a fright when she found out.

“I started to panic because I had a lot of family memories on the page and I had a lot of stuff on my business page too,” she said.

Her first plan of action was to contact Facebook for help.

Unfortunately, the social media platform could only do so much.

“I was losing sleep and getting stressed because there was no one there to help me,” said Ms Fox.

“Every avenue I took, their [Facebook's] systems kept running me around in circles.

“I did everything I could possibly do with Facebook.”

Hacker Returns

One day she managed to access her accounts out of the blue, but it was short-lived as the hacker soon returned.

“Then, last week I got an email from what looked like Meta [the parent company of Facebook], but it was from a Gmail account,” she said.

“This person could show what was being put on my page and I played along and asked, ‘Can you do anything about it?’

“They said ‘We can get it back for you’ but it would cost $200.”

Ms Fox said she couldn’t afford the cost and was told “Good luck”.

Bitcoin Scam

Soon after, her old Facebook account started to become active again.

“This person began reaching out to contacts through my old page and asking them to invest in a Bitcoin scam,” said Ms Fox.

“The girls do be saying to me ‘what’s the story, what are you doing here?’ but it’s not me who’s doing it.”

“They’re using my identity to make them look legitimate and professional.

“It’s also a breach of the Data Protection Act as they’re extorting and taking money from people.”

Ms Fox said one woman she knew was scammed out of €750 by the hacker.

Advice

Newstalk Tech Correspondent Jess Kelly said it is happening to people across Ireland on a daily basis.

“It’s happening every day of the week where individuals, GAA clubs, and small businesses are having their accounts compromised in some way,” she said.

“Not only is it the inconvenience of not being able to use your account, it’s also the fear factor of reputational damage being caused.”

Tech expert Jess Kelly in the Newstalk Studio. Image: Newstalk

Ms Kelly advised listeners to enable multi-factor authentication on their social media accounts.

“It operates as a trip-wire if someone does manage to guess your username or password combination,” she said.

“You will then have to get a text message with a verification code sent to your device for a hacker to have access.”

Facebook has advised users whose accounts have been hacked to go to facebook.com/hacked for help.

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