If you suspect that your Facebook account has been compromised, you should change your password immediately. Then, if you use Facebook to log in to apps like Spotify or Instagram change your logins too. This will block the hacker from accessing those third-party services through your compromised Facebook profile.

A compromised Facebook account can provide hackers with access to a wealth of personal information. Hackers could make use of this information to carry out malicious reasons, like taking credit card numbers or spamming people with fake credit card offers or scams using phishing. Hackers may also use hacked accounts to send spammy messages or post on your timeline (as the case were you who made the mistake).

One of the most frequent ways hackers gain access to an account is when they exploit an error in Facebook’s application code. For instance, a glitch in the iOS Facebook application let hackers https://www.app-ink.net/what-you-should-know-about-youtube-music hijack cookies and take an iPhone user’s so-called “access token.” These tokens are digital keys which grant them full control of the user’s Facebook account as well as, thanks to Single Sign-On, any other websites that the user logs into with their Facebook credentials.

Hackers can also gain access to a user’s account by using brute force attacks. This technique involves guessing passwords, generally the most common ones like 123456789 and 1234567890. In addition, hackers could gain access to accounts by sifting through compromised credentials. There are numerous free tools that can be used to search for stolen information, such as the popular website called HaveIBeenPwned.