It all started at 3 am on a June morning in 2021, with an email from Facebook. “Someone may have accessed your account from another computer,” it read. “Did you authorize this access?”
When Allison Carrow said no, Facebook asked for her two-factor authorization code—which she never had set up. Apparently, though, whoever had stolen her Facebook page had.
A travel advisor since 2018, “I was a huge Facebook user. I had posted thousands of pictures,” Carrow told TRO. And suddenly, all those pictures of her kids—and of her many travels on fam trips—were gone.
Even worse, the page with her name on it still existed, though she could not access it. Soon ads for jewelry appeared, referring customers—HER customers—to a bogus site that took their money and never delivered anything they ordered. Then they hit her Instagram account; when you hit the “link to professional account” button, it, too, links to the jewelry page.
Carrow’s calls to Facebook proved fruitless; while they did finally agree to take down the bogus account, there was no way to recover what she had lost, they said. “I submitted my passport, my driver’s license, all kinds of ID, literally hundreds of times. I never got a response. Nobody ever helped me.”
Not willing to let it go, she put all her travel advisor researching skills to work looking for a solution. Finally, she followed the advice she found on Reddit to go through Oculus, which many people in a similar situation were recommending—but even that didn’t work.
“I went back and forth with Oculus from November through January; I spent literally weeks, and at the end of the day they said sorry, we don’t provide this support any more,” she says. “It was a colossal waste of time. So I just gave up. I was devastated at losing all my memories of my kids growing up—soccer games, vacations, everything. I lost all of my contacts from work since I became a travel agent—1,500 personal friends and countless work contacts from all the shows and hotel inspections, all the people I met everywhere I went, all the contacts I made.”
What surprised her most, she says, was that Facebook has no support, even for business customers in her position who have their credit card information on file. The only advice they could offer, she says, is to start a new account in a different name.
At that point Carrow reached out to the attorney general of California, filing a complaint against Facebook for not protecting her business from the harm being done to it. She was thrilled to get a response promising to contact Facebook on her behalf.
Then came the reply from Facebook:
Her new page, under Allie Carrow, has just 400 friends and few posts. But she has little hope of a positive solution.
“I can’t describe how devastated I was. I was sick to my stomach for about three months. But now I’m over it, I moved on,” she told me (even as she recounted the whole sad story, apparently not over it at all.)
Don’t Let It Happen to You
Just the other day, preparing to write this article, I got an email from Facebook saying someone had attempted to change the password on my account, and asking if it was me. The instant I saw it, I went into my account and changed my password.
Here are some other tips Carrow and I came with to safeguard your account:
Add two-factor authorization. This simple step, where you require a second way to access the account (usually a code sent to your cell phone), can prevent a lot of headaches. Use the Google Authenticator app, designed for just this purpose, so the authorization is not tied to your specific phone, in case you get a new phone. Do it now.
Set up Login Alerts, so Facebook notifies you whenever someone tries to log into your account.
Add a second administrator to your account, with full access. I’m not sure this would work with scammers, but I have my husband as a co-administrator on all my Facebook accounts. That way if I accidentally lock myself out (yes, I did that once), he can let me back in.
Archive your Facebook account and download a copy.
Consider anti-hacking software.
These are simple steps to take—and they can safeguard an important asset, for you and your business.
Cheryl’s 40-year career in journalism is bookended by roles in the travel industry, including Executive Editor of Business Travel News in the 1990s, and recently, Editor in Chief of Travel Market Report and admin of Cheryl Rosen’s Group for Travel Professionals, a news and support group on Facebook. As an independent contractor since retiring from the 9-to-5 to travel more, she has written regular articles about the life and business of travel agents for Luxury Travel Advisor, Travel Agent, and Insider Travel Report. She also writes and edits for professional publications in the financial services, business, and technology sectors.
