Have you received a Message to your Facebook Business Page Account, Email or even a Text that appears to be coming from an official Facebook or Meta source warning that your Facebook Profile is going to be Deleted, Deactivated, Disabled, or Restricted because of Copyright or Terms of Service Violations?
HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:
(1) Take a Deep Breath
(2) Relax, and
(3) DON’T CLICK ON ANYTHING!!!
These are “Phishing Scams” that hackers are using to scare you into clicking their link to “appeal” the judgment or to “verify” your account. These links can many times even look like official Facebook or Meta links to trick you into thinking that it is legit.
The short answer is that none of these are legit. Facebook will never message you in this way, and if you ever have any doubts you can always go directly to the source (login to your account on www.facebook.com) and confirm that everything is OK on your personal account and pages by checking your notifications and account quality.
If you click on one of the links in the message, the page will appear to look like an official Facebook/Meta page, and may display a login or lead you to another link to “login” – where, in fact, they are stealing your Facebook Account login details. Then (if you don’t have Facebook Two Factor Authentication turned on), they will change your password and configure the Two Factor Authentication to their own device. The end result is that you will be locked out of your Facebook Account which owns everything – your Facebook Business Account along with all Business Pages AND more importantly your Ad Account (which may have your credit card linked for billing). Now they have the keys to your car and are going to take your account for a joy ride, spending as much money as they can from your Ad Account/Credit Card to promote their own scams to others. The worst part is, Facebook does not provide a good way to get your account back – you can report it as “hacked” but they will simply disable the account and good luck getting them to restore it and allow you to regain access. We have had many customers who simply had to “start over” with a new personal account and recreate business pages, but then their old pages are still out there “orphaned” (you can’t delete them because you can’t regain access to your personal account) and this results in marketing confusion.
In the following video, I review several examples of these phishing scams and explain what you can do to avoid falling for these scams, in addition to how you can report them and shut down their accounts to help stop the proliferation:
For your reference, here are some of the scare tactic keywords they use in these messages:
“Due to a violation of one or more Facebook Pages Terms, your page is being deactivated.”
“Your page is susceptible to being restricted due to specific malfunctions or noncompliance with our rules.”
“Your account will be deactivated. This is because your page, or the activity on it, doesn’t comply with our Terms of Service.”
“Another user account has reported a problem with your account. Your PAGE will be permanently disabled for violating our terms of service.”
“Your Page Has Been Disabled.” (followed by some bogus stated reasons)
“Your Page was flagged for going against our Page Policy, which includes restrictions around sharing, distributing or promoting content inauthentically.”
“Your Facebook page is scheduled for permanent deletion due to a post that has infringed upon our trademark rights.”
“Need to confirm that this page belongs to you and is being used normally. After 24 hours of not receiving a response, we will temporarily lock this page.”
“Dear administrator, Your account will be deactivated. This is because your page or activity on it is not in compliance with our contractual terms.”
⚠️ If you haven’t already done so, be sure to protect your Personal Facebook Account by turning on Two Factor Authentication: https://www.facebook.com/help/148233965247823