Facebook Fiasco

Hacked and Deactivated in the Social Metaverse

Early on March 7, 2022, I was messaging with a friend on Facebook when I started seeing multiple notices that various friend requests had been accepted. The problem was, I had not sent those requests, and the names of all my new “friends” were not known to me. Next, my profile picture was changed, from this:

to this:

I immediately let Facebook know that these friend requests were not my own, and before I could let them know that I had been hacked by a bad actor, I received this notification:

My personal profile page was shut down immediately, and permanently disabled within the following month. Many of my friends and clients who tried to message me after this happened received notices from Facebook saying that my account had been disabled because I had posted abusive content. In my somewhat naive world, this was a libelous statement, but I soon found out from the first attorney I consulted that I had no recourse in this matter.

After doing a little research, I discovered that what happened to me on Facebook is quite common. First, the hacker gains access to an innocent victim’s profile with a password cracking technique, and then once they have access, they post child exploitation images in order to lead Facebook to disable the account. I also discovered that Facebook has about 2.89 billion users, and it's been estimated that about 160,000 accounts are hacked every day.

It feels horrible to be hacked, believe me, but it was somehow a relief to know that I had not been singled out. I had however made a mistake. Mea culpa! I had recently removed 2FA (two-factor authentication) from my log-in credentials on Facebook, because it was inconvenient (and I had become lackadaisical). This allowed the hacker to access my account password and take over my account.

I don’t want to make this a lament about evil hackers, or a diatribe against Facebook, or a rant about the inhumane culture and unethical practices of big-tech corporate media giants. Those of us who care to pay attention are already well aware of the behemoth we are up against. I had actually contemplated quitting Facebook for some time before this hack happened to me.

I really wouldn’t have cared that much about being removed from Facebook, except for one significant consideration. I also have a Facebook professional “fan” page known as Juliana Swanson's Astral Harmony: Vedic Astrology and Healing! And since my personal profile was removed, I lost all administrative access to this page. I had shared a lot of content on this page for over a decade, and all my followers are real, i.e., not the fake kind of fans which some people in my profession purchase in order to look popular and successful. In other words, there has been a great deal of interest and appreciation for what I share there.

I tried to appeal the decision by Facebook to disable my account, but they completely ignored my requests and disabled me permanently anyway. I sent dozens of emails to customer support and everyone else I could possibly think of at Facebook. I even sent some messages to their upper management. I created a new personal profile on Facebook and sent multiple messages from that account, too.

I have never received a response from anyone except for a few automated emails from the Facebook copyright department which said in effect that there is nothing they will be able to do to assist me. I consulted with two different attorneys. I hired hacked.com to try and help me, and all this to no avail.

In my experience which is similar to that of so many others, Facebook does not generally provide user support. There seems to be no way to get anyone in the Facebook Pages department to reply to my requests and help me. Obviously, nobody cares.

My son is an editor on my fan page, so he is still able to post there on my behalf. Though he also lost access for several weeks, it was eventually reinstated upon his appeal. One great thing has come of this, which is that I created this Substack newsletter. We have tried to migrate my Facebook fans over here since early March, and it appears many have followed our cue and joined. Every day, I have new subscribers and receive great feedback from many of them.

I contacted the Facebook Corporate Secretary’s office at 1601 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025. I sent a package containing my notarized official information, an explanation of what has transpired, a bunch of my personal and business documents, along with a request that they intervene on my behalf. Nothing ever came of this (there was no response though the package was apparently delivered). So for now, we remain in a liminal state on my fan page, and my son will continue to post there on my behalf.

PS Several of my family, friends, followers, and clients have asked if I could see this event occurring in my own birth chart. In hindsight, yes, it was in the stars. I also get that it was meant to be as part of my own life learning (that good ol’ karmic curriculum). Eventually, I may write an astrological article about how to forecast a potential hacking event, but for now, the topic is still a little too close to home.