[Closed] Why is someone in Texas trying to hack my facebook account?

NRA trying to recruit new members .

Probably target low activity accounts as the owner won't notice. They want to build up a fake profile online for more dubious purposes. Same reason my local cycling group gets so much attention from people around the world.

Rebrand your public account and send try and wind up the hacker with supposedly covert challenges regarding your security details 🙂

That's the odd thing, I don't have a public account I don't whore myself out on Facebook. It's just a contact conduit for friends.

It's quite possible that someone has an almost identical email address and has entered it incorrectly into the ID field. So every time they try and log into their account using their password, they are actually attempting to log into yours.

Made even worse if they've saved the email address in their browser.......

I've had it with the for one of my FB accounts. As the name in the email is pretty common, and it's hotmail.com. It doesn't bother me, they'll never get the passphrase right.

(FWIW a friend of mine *still* gets emails from a fairly elderly lawyer in the US who doesn't even know his own private email address, despite my mate [i]*actually having messaged him*[/i] to tell him he keeps missing out the full stop between first and second name. John.Smith@ and JohnSmith@ this has been going on about fifteen years now.)

Already used this on your Facebook account but....

I bet it's Spiteri trying to push her tour

I've had all sorts of stuff to my private gmail by someone using my email address instead of theirs or the one they meant; boarding passes for flights from NZ to Hong Kong, confidential commercial documents from PR firms in the US and 3 years of invites to a Thanksgiving dinner in Virginia which I wish I had the cash to brazen out and go to. I'm also regularly invited to attend/give seminars as a 'respected professional ceramicist' and signed up to a number of craft blogs. Boggling.

Reassuring to think it might just be innocent ineptitude.

Probably Lance

Both my wife and I find out the other day that Facebook accounts have been set up using our email addresses. Username for mine was "Bob fossil" in Hong Kong (bit weird, I do like the boosh.)

To be fair to FB, they deleted the accounts as soon as we reported it.

I've never used FB, so i don't really understand what the benefit of setting up an account with someone else's email address would be.

Hackers rarely use their own computers to hack accounts, rather they use compromised computers elsewhere. That said I'd tend to look at Hanlon's razor here...

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

I've had all sorts of stuff to my private gmail by someone using my email address instead of theirs or the one they meant; boarding passes for flights from NZ to Hong Kong, confidential commercial documents from PR firms in the US and 3 years of invites to a Thanksgiving dinner in Virginia which I wish I had the cash to brazen out and go to. I'm also regularly invited to attend/give seminars as a 'respected professional ceramicist' and signed up to a number of craft blogs. Boggling.

I get large scale chemical orders to my gmail address at least once a month. Occasionally I get panicked follow-ups from the person saying the order is overdue. I've also had a load of signups to banks, LinkedIn, Paypal etc. Some people are pretty thick.

A lot of sites offer login via Facebook's authorisation system. Setting up a secure two factor authorisation system is non trivial - there's really only Google and Facebook's systems that you are likely to use. Because of this other sites accept their login as valid rather than try it themselves and get it wrong without realising.

So if someone gets access to your FB account they can log in and use lots of sites to buy goods or transfer cash, etc.

I've never used FB, so i don't really understand what the benefit of setting up an account with someone else's email address would be.

All part of setting up a false identity that can then be used to do illegal stuff.

If it's Texas I would be pretty sure it is just someone incapable of typing their username correctly.

Frustrating, but not malicious in my opinion.

[quote="richardkennerley"]Both my wife and I find out the other day that Facebook accounts have been set up using our email addresses.How does that work then, IIRC facebook send at least one email to the account used to set it up [i]during the set up process[/i] which if you don't answer, the account isn't set up. So how would they use your email address? Unless they've got access to your email, which is far more worrying.
(It's a long time since i set mine up, the process might have changed)

I get random stuff from random Ghanaians which I used to assume was some sort of scam/spam but actually my surname is quite common in Ghana for some reason...So it's probably accidental.

It's quite possible that someone has an almost identical email address and has entered it incorrectly into the ID field. So every time they try and log into their account using their password, they are actually attempting to log into yours.

Someone once used my wife's email to open an Ocado account, so she got all the emails re delivery notices etc (we didn't get the deliveries).

In the end she reset the password to lock out the original owner to stop the endless delivery mails.

The Ocado systems sounds, um, secure. Or not.

Facebook telling me that they've blocked a login attempt dr m a remote location, but as a precaution, I'm now locked out and need to change my password.

Hmm, is this an email telling you to click on a link to change your password?

If so, and it might be obvious, but just in case, don't click on the link (though your account will likely be compromised now anyway if you have).

Either way, turn on two-factor authentication. Also use the setting to nominate a friend to help if you get locked out.

The Ocado systems sounds, um, secure. Or not.

The original user obviously never had to validate the email (which they couldn't do as it wasn't theirs).

All the wife had to do was reset password and they send out a reset link to her email. She then had access to the full account. No idea if you needed the CVC number to re-use the card or change delivery address etc.

Would be quite funny if we starting sending the original owner random Ocado shipments eg 200 tins of sardines, followed by half a ton of dog food....