24/04/2024
Unfortunately, Facebook is a breeding ground for scams, and the company does very little or nothing about it.
One of the most frequent scams that I have encountered is cloning someone's FB page (this is not the same as hacking!) and then contacting others, usually FB friends of the cloned account, to send them scam messages via Messenger.
These messages usually start with "Hi, how are you today?". They are probably being sent by bots (automation software) because whatever you answer does not matter, they always follow the same scheme. They tell you about alleged government grants and recommend someone who can get you the grant, of course for a fee. The grants don't exist.
But this is only one side of the scam. Once you learn that someone is making "friends" requests under your name and using your photos, you may believe that you have been hacked (but you aren't), and you tell your friends through your profile page that you have been hacked. Once you do this, the inferno starts. Either the original scammer himself, or other scammers who scan FB for this kind of comment, will invade your page with messages that urge you to contact them or some alleged hacking expert who will resolve your problem. But you don't actually have this "problem". They are all scammers (or maybe one and the same scammer under different names) who want your money. Maybe the one who cloned your account is behind some of these scams, too.
Don't reply and don't contact any of these scammers.
You have not been hacked and need no "expert" to fix it.
Hacking means that someone has been able to find out your FB password and has taken over your account, Usually, the first thing they do is change the password, so you cannot access your own account anymore. As long as you can access your account, you have very probably not been hacked. But if you have other signs that your account is compromised, change your password immediately.
What has happened in almost all cases, is that someone has created a new account using your name and photos copied from your FB page to make others believe it's you and scam them as described. This is called cloning.
It's a nuisance but does not affect you seriously.
I personally have received two "friend requests" today from scammers who pretended to be someone else. One of the contacts is an FB friend. This is why I am writing this as information for our FB friends. I did this:
On the scammer's FB page, I clicked on the 3 dots at the upper right corner and selected "Find support or report" --> "Pretending to be someone" --> "A friend" and then select the friend (not the fake account) from the dropdown list. Facebook will then close down the fake account.
The owner of the cloned account can do this, too, by choosing "Me" instead of "A friend"
Be well and be alert, don't fall for FB scams.